But there is light in my face again

Reflections on a year that has changed me, with photos.

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Photo credit: Pete Longworth

This year has changed me. When my relationship ended in February, I entered an underworld, the here-but-not-here place grief takes all of us if we are awake and alive long enough.

I was an animal going to ground¹, curled up in its shelter, wounded and afraid. For months, I couldn't leave the perimeter of my town without panicking. I startled easily. My heartbeat was erratic. I showered four, sometimes five times a day to bring myself back into my skin. Laid on the kitchen floor, the bathroom floor, any floor—the cats would walk on me and knead and lick my fingers and face with their scratchy tongues. I cried everywhere. Spent so many hours in bed.

I'm not new to pain, but this was different. I believe years of sobriety had left me open enough to finally feel the weight of everything that had never been felt: the loss of this relationship and our future, and all the prior losses, too. I'd grown out of all my old defenses and escapes; I had to sit this one through for real.