There are no five stages of grief. The stages you heard of or read were written for people who are dying, not for those left behind.

I am from Oklahoma, where the land is steady and wide, yet nothing in me felt steady after that five months, six days, twenty hours, and forty minutes ended between Mom and Dad leaving me.

The horizon stayed flat while my inner world broke, as I did not only lose them; I lost the future that had already taken root in my mind. I lost the version of myself that still had somewhere to return. I lost the quiet assumption that life would hold.

Grief came through me like weather that would not pass, like the tornados the greater percentage of you have never experienced.

Not dramatic every day, but always present.
My brain kept reaching for them out of habit, like calling a number that no longer connects, and nothing in my body felt organized. Eating habits changed, sleeping changed, everything changed.

I could be exhausted and wired in the same hour. Emotions came before words could catch them, signals first, meaning later, if at all. People talk about trauma like it is the event, but I learned it is what stays and reshapes you. It is the way the past starts speaking for the present.

There is no comparison that makes this lighter. Grief does not become smaller because someone else hurts, nor did or do I become who I was before. There is no road that leads back there.

Change came whether I welcomed it or not. Some of that change feels like growth. Some of it feels like something taken. Most of it lives somewhere in between.

I am still living, not even sure why because failure weighs more than success, and that much is true, as I carry them in a way that does not leave. The pain is not always sharp, but the presence remains.