all i can say is that my brain broke. beyond that, i don’t know how to describe to people what grief and trauma sensed like to me. first i convinced myself that i was a ghost; i had to be dead, i haunted, i passed without sensing or being sensed. then i determined i must exist on a plane parallel to the one all else occupied and thrived and moved and lived. i could move alongside them through gossamer, being with them without being with them. then i thought my mind must be vapor, hovering above my body but not of it. everything became vapor i could not condense or collect on my fingertips. i could feel everything and nothing at every moment the size of water molecules.

i used to like the malleable routine and conceptual existence as a student, working in and from my wondering/wandering body. but as something not of her body, conceptual became too corporeal. as vapor, i was encapsulated and nebulous. everything and nothing in harmony.

embodying oneself again is a painful process. slipping back on rough skin and electric nerves and heavy head and form (intent) and pressures that prick and push and insecurities that puncture and anxieties that pick apart. embodiment is everything hurts. embodiment is sleeping and not sleeping. embodiment is constants and lack. embodiment is space in/out. embodiment is a sense of time. time is nearing two years since her body stopped breathing and i exhaled myself out of my body and she and it and everything became vapor that couldn’t be moved through. became vapor i wanted to remain in because it meant not losing her molecules. embodiment is progressing and accumulation and loss. but it is not always heavy, and i can drop as i can carry.

[a note to myself that labors to unburden myself of guilt in progressing in my studies/degree because doing so moves time forward and away from her. that respects what my mindbody has been through. that refuses linearity and progress as forward. that appreciates more and more what it means to mend but not fix.]