On the day I found out my dad had a year to live, I was standing at work, typing away stupidly about something I can’t remember now. And in an instant, I was catapulted into a terrible grief I knew nothing about. Like a dark room I’d never entered, feeling my way around. Gemma called my boss, my colleagues, and my best friends. Ordering one to give me time off, to get coffee, and to buy moving boxes. In the apartment, I couldn’t even remember my own name. Gemma found my passport, called my sister and arranged a pick up, and booked my flight for the next morning. Early but not too early, because she said I needed sleep. How do I even begin to pack right now? Gemma told everyone what to do. She put on my favourite songs, Taylor Swift, whom she didn’t particularly care for, and made the executive decision to toss my near-empty shampoo bottles. We walked through a handful of outfits I’d need - certainly comfy ones - as Gemma proposed. And when I’d come back to collect my t...
I’ve left a little piece of me to die with everyone I no longer know. It’s been the hardest feeling I’ve come to terms with in this lifetime, and probably the next. There are dead pieces of everything all around me. Pieces of myself that I miss, pieces of people I loved, pieces of memories I can still feel, pieces of hurt that I carry in my pockets. Every so often I visit the graveyards. I grieve my people and all of the places I’ve been with them. I mourn all of the bridges I burned because of the girl I used to be, the attitude I used to own, the emotions I used as a weapon. I visit and I hurt myself by imagining a world where all of these things were still alive. Here lies a girl I knew once: There’s this theory that with every decision you make, a part of you breaks off and continues in the other direction - creating an infinitely long line of different pathways in life. Many of mine lay here. A version of me who got that one job and left that place, a version of me who got married...