I’m allowing grief to paralyze me. I am sleeping too much and writing too little. But I am not going to have a break down and wind up in the hospital, and I definitely am not going to drink over his leaving me. He has been gone for three and a half months; one and a half months of this time I have known he was never coming back. It still baffles me that he let his lack of courage influence his decisions. I mean, who leaves with just a back pack and nothing else? Who gives everything they’ve owned for years, to include socks and jock straps, to the Salvation Army? Thirteen plastic garbage bags later, and he did.

Life has changed radically since he told me he was never coming back. My friends and God have offered me the strength of their shoulders and the curve of their feet. I have not walked alone and I am not bent over with too much to bare. My health is better than it’s ever been.

I seek solace in God and am offered vastness. Grief is only a single stone on a sheet of water. My friend gave me a quartz which is heavy in my hand. Four pounds of crystal. I float on the sheet of water, the crystal on my belly and am lit be the sun, and later shadowed by the moon. My love for all is complete in this minute. No one has taken anything from me. I am simply offered myself, and myself is good, is strong, has vision that will outlive the sting of a failed relationship.