Category Archives: Journal Entry

Journal Entry

Living Minute by Minute: How Grief Rearranges Time

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Journal Entry

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.

Journal Entry

The Hole That Was You

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Journal Entry

I hate that you gave up on life.

It hurts so badly, all the time.

There are these tiny moments — little flickers — where I forget that you’re really gone. Gone gone.

And in those brief moments, I feel almost whole again, like the world hasn’t shattered and left me standing in the ruins…again.

I know you didn’t mean to knock the wind out of me a second time, but you did.

You didn’t mean to leave me with all of this.

I’m sitting here in the hole that was you —

now responsible for everything you left, and everything I already had:

Odin, Freija, this apartment, this life that keeps moving forward without your love, without your presence, without your support.

The train still goes by as if nothing has changed.

But everything has.

We’ve gone from four souls to three in this “home” we created, and all of us are trying to adjust in our own ways. Odin curls into me because he feels the shift. Freija pretends the world is steady. And I… I’m just trying to survive inside a reality I never wanted.

Just know that we loved you. We still love you and we still look for you.

And we will keep loving you long after you’re gone.

We’ll miss the laughter, the dancing, the playfulnest, the lazy days spent with all of us snuggled on the bed, the little adventures, the quiet, meaningful mornings, the feeling of belonging to someone who felt like home.

We’ll miss it all for the rest of our days.

Reflection

Grief keeps teaching me that love doesn’t end just because a life does. The pain I feel isn’t proof that something is wrong with me — it’s proof that something mattered. That he mattered. That the life we built, the routines we shared, the future we dreamed of, all had weight and meaning.

In these moments of writing, I’m learning to let myself speak without polishing, without shrinking the truth. I’m learning that mourning isn’t linear, dignified, or clean. It’s jagged and contradictory. It’s loving someone and resenting them in the same breath. Missing the moments that made life feel soft, while trying to survive the ones that broke me open.

I’m beginning to see that healing isn’t about replacing what I’ve lost — it’s about creating space inside myself to carry it. A quieter space, maybe. A gentler one. A space where anger and love can coexist, where memory doesn’t have to be tidy to be sacred.

And even in the ache, even in the absence, there is still some part of me whispering: I’m still here.

That has to be enough for today.

Thanks for reading –xxooC

Journal Entry

The Part That Stayed

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Journal Entry

I have so much anger and rage. I hate you for making me go through this again. All you had to do was come home or call me to pick you up. That was it. What was so bad that you had to leave me like this?

I love you, and now I hate you. The trauma bond is the worst part because not only am I grieving you being gone — because you were my morning, my afternoon, and my sunset — but I’m grieving the emotional tether we shared when things were bad. Even then, we still had each other. Now I have nothing.

I was so good without you in the aftermath of the first loss. You helped me believe again, and then you accused me of making you dependent on me. But we were dependent on each other — we knew that, we acknowledged it, and we accepted it. And then you left me.

I learned so much about him because of you. You showed me around your hometown and filled in the pieces of his story — the childhood memories, the places, the things he couldn’t tell me himself. Through you, I felt closer to him. You were my comfort in the painful absence of what was my former life. You filled in the gaps I couldn’t fill on my own — the ones I didn’t even know I still needed. And now, all of that is gone too. There is no more. I grieve it all, every bit of it. All at once, it’s all-consuming.

Reflection:

Love can be both the wound and the salve — and in that contradiction, I am learning to breathe again. Some pieces of love remain, even when the person doesn’t.

Mantra:

I am still here.

I am still Love.

I am still Becoming.

Journal Entry

Liminal Space

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Journal Entry — Nov 3rd, 2025

Our souls connected in a time and place when I was lost. I didn’t know what I wanted or where I was headed. I only knew that I couldn’t continue on the path I was on. Then Greg came into my life and showed me something different—something that felt stable, something that felt like home. Feelings I thought were lost and I would never be able to recapture.

Our time together was often tumultuous. There were times that were unbearable for both of us. But one truth was clear, we always sought comfort in one another. In the quiet discussions of the morning coffees, eating together, or just sitting, I now look back and I think he brought me through a liminal space—an in-between world. One I was stuck in but wasn’t meant to stay in forever. A space I had to pass through. Maybe he wasn’t meant to stay either.

There was such duality in him. The person I saw was so full of hope and life, yet he was also self-loathing and chaotic. He was joy and pain all at once. When things were still and quiet, I could see the gentleness in his heart. I think I fell in love with that version of him—the one who dreamed, who believed we could rebuild something beautiful out of all our brokenness.

Through him, I learned how to live again. All that I had learned before—especially through losing Eric—didn’t prepare me for saying goodbye to Greg in the way I had to. But even in the tragedy, there were gifts. He reminded me how to smile again. How to feel wanted. How to dance in the living room and not care who was watching. He showed me that life doesn’t always need to be so serious, and that sometimes, if we just let go, we can still find small miracles waiting for us in unexpected places.

I meant it when I told him he brought me back to life. He did. And while I wish, down to my broken core, that it hadn’t ended this way, I’m still here. I’m learning that the love, the laughter, and even the chaos all became part of my story. They live in me now, just like the parts of Eric that never left.

Maybe Greg’s purpose was to help me bridge the gap between who I was after losing Eric and who I’m still becoming. Maybe he and I met to help each other remember that love, no matter how fragile or fleeting, can still change us in the deepest of ways.

*Note: I’ve always been a huge proponent of affirmations. I now use them daily to ground, remind myself I’m still here, and to just get me through the pain.

Closing Reflection & Affirmation

I honor the love that was, the lessons that came, and the parts of myself I found through it all.
Both Eric and Greg touched my life in ways that shaped who I am today — and even though their absence feels unbearable at times, the love remains.
It lives in my heart, in the way I care for others, in the way I keep choosing to breathe, to move, to feel.

I am still here.
I am still learning.
And even in this space of grief, I am growing roots again.

Today, I will let myself rest in the truth that I have survived love and loss before, and I will again.
I carry their memory with gratitude, not a weight, but as a quiet light guiding me toward peace.

Thanks for reading. I love you all –xxooC