Returning

I have been gone.

I have been gone for some time, and the place where I was is not a good place. It was my place of grief, and fear, and sorrow, and loneliness, and self-destruction. It was the only place I could be for all this time.

The other day my husband said to me, as I recuperated from a wild laughing fit of no apparent origin, that he had missed me. And he was glad I was back. And in his face was more sadness than I have ever seen in him. And more hope than I have seen in him in a long time. It was the first time I considered what my anguish had cost the two of us.

I will grieve for my father forever. There is a big, empty hole inside of me that will not go away. Nor do I want it to; missing him is important to me.

Back to my point: I have been gone. I spent three years on my island, isolated in the wind and the cold, doing the hard work that is grieving. I was buried in it. It consumed me. It ate me alive.

Somehow, I survived. There were so many, many days I thought I would not. I did not want to. But I did.

And here I am. I have returned. I am not the same person at all, but I am back. There are deeper shadows around my edges, and wispy, swirling, dark things behind my eyes. We've all agreed to work together, at least for now. And there are moments now and again in which I feel almost...alive.

Never whole, but alive.

I set forth cautiously, as my kind and patient husband hopes for the first time since the year we married, which was, unfortunate timing be damned, the year my world exploded and I vanished into the dark.

I set forth with bated breath, and I am truly astonished to be here. Alive. Returning.