Drowning in 2023

The tears are wrenching out of me in gasps and whimpers.

Tomorrow is my birthday. The first one without you. Why should my birthday matter?

It doesn’t.

I was never much of a birthday person, but now? Even less so. Why on earth would I celebrate this past year? Or the one coming?

If my own birthday is this difficult, yours is going to be twice as hard. Maybe I won’t wake up tomorrow.

I wish I didn’t have my kids … my best friend’s words keep running through my head, when I was on the phone with her that first night after …

Don’t Heather. Please. Don’t. Don’t let go. Don’t let Dee find you like that.

I couldn’t do that to him. I know you didn’t mean to do it to me, and never would have on purpose. I can’t do it to my son. I wish I could, so I could leave this place.

That’s all it is any more. A place. A thing. An existence. I’ll write the book so that it makes sense. So they understand.

My cheeks sting. When you for cry long enough, your face becomes burnt from the salt in your tears. It’s like a sunburn. It even peels eventually.

And that wrinkly thin skin right at the outter corners of your eyes … it actually rips, tiny miniscule little paper cut like rips after a while from wiping the tears away before they can burn your skin.

You didn’t come back last night. Maybe it takes a lot out of both of us to reach eachother.

It already took so much to find eachother .. it took nothing at all to lose you .. and I would give everything to have you again. I miss you.