Day 135: The Draining and the Penance.

This last wave has been receding, though I'm not counting chickens just yet. This feels familiar now. At first, it feels as if the tide is going out. I have a few days where I'm starting to resemble some kind of composure, but then it's revealed that it was not a tide, but the first warning of the approaching tsunami, coming to reopen every wound.

Those days contain fewer tears, but they are filled with much more dread. I walk around a lifeless husk with brief moments of consciousness, highlighting all the moments between where I wasn't really there. Wherever I'm at, that's not where I really am.

My willpower, strength, and resolve drains and withers away. I become desperate to salve the wound, but there's not enough energy to even apply any ointment to these festering, infected wounds, and many times, the ointment proves irrelevant. The anguish follows like unwelcome, unnatural shadows, and I just become miserable in a different place. I take in the view, feel nothing, and the same thoughts occupy all of the functioning spaces remaining in my mind.

Unable to react any differently, I turn to find my one true love, my safe shoulder to cry on, and recall why I'm here in the first place.

Very few providers of aid in these times have presented themselves, and even the chosen few aren't always up to their tasks, or I am too depleted to attempt to harvest their benefits. Through helping and comforting others, I can find a small slice of solace, though many times, I can't bring myself to speak. A message I need to deliver, that someone needs to hear, and I've no energy to share.

Time has lost all comprehension. Living one hour at a time for months on end has turned time into a 4th dimensional state. It was just yesterday that we last spoke, and yet it's been years since you've been gone. Past and present may feel as one, and they may also expand with the rest of the universe.

I am still unconvinced that you are truly gone. To think such a thing is possible is to embrace absurdity. I am forced to remind myself on a constant, soul-sucking rate, only to remain in the same disbelief the moment I've moved on to the next thought.

It is not you who needs to wake up. That role must surely be for me because it just can not be true. Your eyes of chocolate must still see this world, while my eyes of blue and silver search for you in this dream I pray I'm awoken from.

One more hour, I continue onward. I still question what purpose there is and what value remains, but I keep wandering down this path that I mysteriously appeared on that fateful day, one step at a time. If only because I believe I failed you. I am absolved by many and showered with pleas of forgiveness, but the guilt I carry even precedes your death. I was ashamed before, but whatever I am now can only be described in terms beyond my vocabulary. Etched in stone, they will stand the test of time. I have felt undeserving of this continued life, but in that same power of guilt, I feel I owe you. I am in your debt for your loving support and my dereliction of duty to give you my own.

Whatever good I'm still capable of doing, I've been giving it my all. I accept this penance to seek forgiveness from your memory. With what strength remains, I give for you. My memoir, our memoir, I've written to help others, but I've only done it for you. You wanted to help those who had the afflictions we shared. Your wishes are my command. Your wishes are my saving grace. I will keep trying, unsatisfied in my progress on the road to redemption.

I write to help my fellow bereaved and add to the tally of those whom I've made reconsider already. I write, as it has shown itself to be my most useful tool to accomplish this goal. I write to feel closer to you. You were always the better writer. I was good, and you were great. Every time the pen touches paper or my fingers grace the keys, I think of you, not just in content, but as inspiration to live up to your standards. I will never truly succeed in that goal, but it places me on the right path where I may find your footsteps before me. I will always be behind you, but I will follow closely, and I hope I may catch up to you, and just like the precious memories behind the pictures of our first hike together, I hope to hold your hand on the trail again.

I love you, and I miss you more and more every day.