Grief is a hunger. A dark pit that yawns open beneath the feet when we least expect it. I have worn its weight like a shroud, a heavy, invisible cloak. Some days, I am drowning in the black water of memory, clutching at anything to keep my head above the waves. Other days, I am the shore—flat, barren, the tide of life pulling away and leaving me gasping for connection.
Once, long ago, I thought I could drown the sorrow with a needle. Heroin—my sweet saboteur—promised me peace. It lied, of course. It always does. It whispered in my ear that I would feel nothing, that it would silence the howling wolves in my chest, those beasts who wore the names of all the things I’d lost. But I learned, too late, that numbness is not peace. Grief lives in the body like a tenant who refuses to pay rent; even when you think you’ve evicted it, it finds a way to sneak back in.
I remember a day, strung out and bone-thin, staring into the bathroom mirror of a place that wasn’t even mine. My face was gray, a ghost’s mask, and my eyes were twin craters. I was 27 but already embalmed in the kind of despair that ages a person from the inside out. In the mirror, I saw not a person but a problem, a stain. A daughter who had failed, a sister who could not lead, a human who had long since stopped feeling human.
But the needle could not save me. Nothing could save me, except myself. And oh, how long it took to even want saving.
Grief, PTSD—they are the gods of chaos, and they demand their sacrifices. My hands still shake sometimes when the past creeps in uninvited, and I have spent nights curled on the floor, hugging myself as if my arms could build a fortress around the broken pieces inside me. There are days when the sound of someone laughing cuts me open, because it reminds me of what I’ve lost—the friends, the moments, the years.
But if heroin taught me anything, it is this: You cannot outrun pain. You must walk through it, step by bloody step. And so I did.
I learned to find anchors in the storm—small things, like the sound of my child’s voice when he asks me to stay by his bedside a little longer, to chase away the dark. I started writing again, not for the world, but for the little girl inside me who still believed in magic, in words, in the possibility of healing.
Some nights, when the wolves come, I let them howl. I let myself cry, scream, rage. I write their names on paper and burn them. And when the fire dies down, I sit in the ashes and remind myself: I am still here.
Grief does not end. PTSD does not politely bow out. They are roommates I did not choose, but I have learned to coexist with them, even as they rearrange the furniture of my mind. There are no tidy endings in this life. But there is survival. There is the tiniest seed of hope, even when your hands are too numb to hold it.
To those who are drowning, I say this: Let the waves crash. But do not forget—you are still breathing. Grief may take many things, but it cannot take that. You are still breathing.
Breath ///
B🤍
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