Time

Time is a concept that is hard for me to grasp. It slips through my fingers, bending and warping to its own rhythm. How can it be that you can feel as if you've known someone your entire life when it has only been a matter of moments? How can time move so excruciatingly slowly when you're filled with dread, yet fly by when you watch your baby grow from crawling to being a tiny human who is reading, writing, and having full conversations?

It's in the moments when you walk into a room and time slows down, the air thick with a sour, musty odor you can't place. You see the look of defeat, the face of a father who has lost his child, a sister wailing, begging the nurse to tell her if her sister is really dead. You see her trying to reason with herself, struggling to understand how her sister’s soul could be gone while her body is still warm. In those moments, it feels as if you are living outside of your own body, but now the smell has a name...it's death.

As I sit here, attempting to be present with my emotions, I feel nothing. This is new for me. My go-to emotion is normally guilt, but right now, I don't even have that. What do you do when you feel nothing? After time caught up with my body and I was surrounded by grief, I didn't know what I could offer. The soul I wanted to say goodbye to was gone, because this time, time was not on my side by a mere 120 seconds. Two minutes. That's all I lacked. I find myself haunted by those final moments. Did she know I was coming? Did she feel abandoned? Would I have made a difference in those last breaths? The weight of these thoughts is crushing. Each one a dagger to my heart, each "what-if" a wound that never heals.

I've been working diligently on giving myself time to feel, to put myself first, but in this moment, those 120 seconds feel like a punishment from the world for trying to learn how to live without putting everyone else first. I know that love and relationships are made up of a million tiny moments and choices. It doesn't dwindle down to the final moments. But my heart still aches, begging to answer all my "whys". I try to think of the beautiful moments—the celebrations, the times I stopped by just to say hi, the exchanged messages, and the hours spent listening to her talk because she needed a safe place. I try to focus on the laughter and sweetness, but the "what-ifs" come flooding back with the "why’s", and I can't outrun them. Would I have made it on time if I hadn't sat down at my desk to deep breathe while putting stickers on my new water bottle? What if that last phone call wasn't another butt dial at 2 a.m., but her reaching out because she was scared and frantic from the medication? If I had been able to do anything different, would it have made a difference?

I want to scream, to rage against the unfairness of it all. I want the world to know that I am not okay, that my heart is shattered into pieces. I want to be held, to be told that I am not alone and there was nothing more that I could have done. I want to cry, to let the tears wash away the pain...but what if showing my grief only burdens those around me who are suffering just as much, if not more? If I were given the space to grieve, would I be safe with myself to grieve and know what to do with these emotions?

Am I allowed to cry?

In this confusing web of time, guilt, and what-ifs, I am trying to find my way. To understand that it’s okay to grieve, to feel nothing, to feel everything. To give myself the grace that I so readily extend to others. To sit with my emotions, even when they don’t make sense, and to know that it’s okay to cry. Because grief is not a path that is straightforward, and sometimes, just existing in the midst of it is all we can do.