The Diary Of A Wistful Girl

July 5, 2024

Dear Diary,

Grief and loss are strange, you know?

The sky is still a spectacular shade of blue and the sun still warms the plains of your exposed skin. The grass remains a lush hue of green, children laugh from their bellies, and the world keeps on turning.

But there you are.

Grieving.

Losing.

I never expected those things to stop being true because I am hurting, but I expect - I demand - them to be dull by comparison. At least just a little so I can revel in the sadness before I start to pick myself back up again.

It's almost a cruel joke the world plays on us, because they say life is how we perceive it, but is that really true? You'd think our perception, so ensnared in despair, might fog the landscape. The light refracting in our eyes might dim to attest the mood.

But it isn't and it doesn't. The only difference is that I don't enjoy it as much when I so evidently resemble a long abandoned ruin. Frayed at the seams like the teddy bear you dragged around when you were a child.

That is how I really feel.

Dragged over the rough ground for years and then forgotten about. Tucked away in the back of the closet or worse yet, buried in a box in the attic waiting to be rediscovered in twenty years or burned in a house fire that feels like it's never coming to set me free.

I know other people have felt like this and I know when I see the old woman walking her dog past my house for the third time today that she has felt this way. I know that even those laughing children will feel this way some day because pain and loss and suffering are inevitable, but knowing that doesn't make it any less lonely.

I'm worried that life is going to consist of lower lows. I'm so worried, I'm starting to develop a wrinkle between my brow.

How is everyone dealing with their grief? How are you keeping your head above water when the water is thick tar that stings your skin and poisons your blood? How are you treading the blackness when the weeds clinging to your ankles are the frigid, dead hands of every mistake you've ever made?

I know one day I'm going to wake up and realize the weight of the rocks in my pockets isn't half as heavy as it used to be, but until then.

The world will keep on turning.