Journal Entry

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I made it to Kentucky yesterday, and for the first time in weeks, I feel like I’m sitting inside a tiny bubble where I don’t have to carry everything. I don’t have Odin and Freija depending on me. I’m not surrounded by reminders or tasks or the weight of an apartment that feels too big and too quiet. I’m here in a space that has always held me gently, and I can feel myself breathing again in a way I haven’t since the moment everything collapsed.

It’s strange how grief rearranges time.

Before Greg died, I was always thinking ahead — planning the weekend, the next trip, the next move, the life we wanted by the water. Now I can barely see past the next hour. My world has shrunk down to the smallest increments: wake up, breathe, take a shower, sit still, cry, drink coffee, breathe again. It’s not weakness. It’s survival.

I’ve talked a lot since I got here. Cried a lot too. But something is shifting in me. I’m not angry anymore — not the sharp, chaotic anger that used to rip through me. If anything, I’m angry at the circumstances… at the weight I’m carrying… at the reality he left behind. But him? No. His darkness was bigger than either of us. I see that now. I wasn’t meant to save him. I couldn’t have. His mind spiraled into a place I couldn’t reach, and he slipped away.

The sadness is quieter now, but deeper.

I keep thinking about the life we were building — not just our life, but mine and his. Two separate lives woven together with plans and dreams and all the little rituals that made us feel like a team. He always said I would thrive without him, and I hated hearing that because I believed I needed him. Now it’s just me. And I have to carry on with the pieces I still have.

I wish I had understood everything better. I wish I had recognized the signs sooner. Not out of guilt — I don’t blame myself — but out of sadness. For us. For everything we could have been if his mind weren’t fighting him every day. I’ll always carry him softly in my heart. He’ll always have an imprint on my soul. But the future we planned together died with him, and now I’m standing in this strange place of rebuilding a life I never wanted to live alone.

I know I’m on some kind of path. I can feel it even if I can’t see it. Right now, I’m just living moment to moment, because that’s all I have the capacity for. The future is too big and too blurry to look at. Maybe one day I’ll be able to picture it again. Maybe not. But for now, the minutes are enough.

Sometimes healing looks like doing nothing but existing in the safest place you can find.

Sometimes that’s all you can do.

And right now… that’s where I am.