She'd begun to keep a mental tally of all the little gestures and omissions that indicated he might be pulling away: a sudden, obsessive interest in his phone, a distracted, mechanical quality to his embraces, increasingly vague replies to her questions and unreadable facial expressions. Each occurrence triggered a small alarm in her brain which kept her body into a near constant state of restlessness.

Though she lay beside him in bed each night, she imagined he was on his own blanketted island where placid, impersonal waters guarded his private thoughts and dreams from her. The harder she swam towards it, she realized, the further it shrank into the distance.

Frustration was replaced with panic then, as if she were in actual danger of drowning: she'd already paddled too far out, she thought, and didn't have the energy to turn back.

Today is Ash Wednesday. For me, it means three things.

One, it means I’ll have to remember to avoid going anywhere with my parents, because we’ll all have ashes smeared on our foreheads. I normally rub mine off pretty quickly, but not quick enough to make it seem like it’s on purpose. I'm still not sure if I'm technically allowed to rub it off, or if it's considered rude or something.

I remember when I was in second grade, back before we moved, I went to the grocery store with my mom and this old woman licked her finger and tried to clean my forehead for me. She’d thought I was just a messy child. Then my mom had turned around, revealing the identical grey smudge on her face, and the woman had scoffed and muttered something. No one’s ever tried to wipe my face again, but we do get a lot of bizarre looks. I've wished ever since then that we'd all just wipe the ashes off.

The second thing Ash Wednesday means is that we have a school service, the one where we get the ashes rubbed on our heads. This is fine, because classes are short, which means less schoolwork.

However, the third thing--and this only applies this year--is that it’s the day of Mr. Gleason’s science test. He claims that he shortened it so that we’d have the proper amount of time, but I still work up until the bell. I didn’t even answer one of the questions, but that was having to do more with my lack of knowledge than my lack of time.

These three things combined make for a rather awful day, if I’m honest. I see Pearl in science, of course, but we don’t talk because of the test. The only other times I spot her throughout the day she seems to be in a bad mood, perhaps because of the school service, since those tend to have that effect on her. And seeing her makes me nervous, and the science test (even when I’m done) makes me nervous, and talking to Maggie makes me nervous because she keeps asking me if I’ve texted Kelly yet--and I haven’t.

When I get home, I march right upstairs and stand in the bathroom in front of the mirror. It’s just me, in a regular Saint Paul’s uniform, with regular short hair and a line of ashes still on my forehead. I look like everyone else, I look boring, I look like me. Most days I’m comforted by my uniform, because it’s easy to put on in the mornings and I never have to think about what to wear.

But today, I hate it.

I tear off my uniform cardigan and kick off my blue and green skirt, leaving me in my white blouse and a pair of tight-fitted shorts and my silly white socks from the uniform store. I turn the sink on and wash my forehead until it turns pink.

Usually after school I put on a random old hoodie--recently I’ve been wearing one that’s from a girls in engineering camp that my mom convinced me to go to in the summer after seventh grade. I decided after that not to pursue engineering.

Today I root through my closet, then my drawers. Finally I happen upon a knitted pink sweater, forgotten behind a stack of pants because it has a big pull on one sleeve. I shuck off my blouse and put the sweater on. It’s a little airier than a hoodie, but I leave it on and get started on my homework. I need to finish an entire week’s worth of math homework before Friday. I haven’t done any of it yet.

I’ve only just scraped my way through Monday’s math problems when my dad calls me for dinner. I stand and hesitate at my door. In the end, I pull the sweater off. It’s not that my parents would mind me wearing it, it’s just that it’s not what I usually wear. I don’t want to feel like I have to explain something being different.

. . .

I stand in the bathroom before school, uniform on, ready to leave. But I’m staring at my reflection again, wanting something. If I was allowed to, I’d wear something new and different, I think. If I had the confidence, anyway.

But the best I can do is wear my green pull-over instead of the regular dark blue cardigan I always wear. The cardigan has pockets, so it’s objectively better, but I go with the green sweater anyway.

I try approaching Pearl when I get to school, but she’s already talking animatedly to someone.

It's Henry, back from suspension. He and Andrew Ryan both, though I don’t really care what Andrew’s up to.

Henry’s leaning with his back against the row of lockers, one leg propped against the locker behind him. His hair is casually tousled, and his body language, at first glance, suggests nonchalance. I’ve learned to read him better though, because as I near I can see his arms are crossed tightly over his chest, his leg is bouncing nervously against the locker, and his mouth is screwed into an unhappy line.

“He’s a jerk,” Henry mutters to Pearl as I approach. He’s eyeing the hallway behind me warily.

Pearl’s talking over him, books flying from her backpack to her hands to her locker and back again. “If it wasn’t for her, this wouldn’t have started in the first place. She must have been telling all kinds of lies about you! For ages! How long have you been apart? Like forever, she must have some kind of issue--”

“What’s going on?” I ask. Pearl freezes up and Henry blows out a sigh. I notice that his eyes are following something just past my head. I turn to see that the something is a group of his football friends. None of them even look at him. Maybe they’re not such good friends after all.

“I got into a fight with Andrew Ryan,” Henry leans in to tell me quietly when they pass.

I can almost hear myself blink. “Well. Duh.” I sputter out a laugh, and glance at Pearl, distracted enough to expect to see her grinning back at me.

She’s staring down at her tennis shoe as she rubs a toe against the ground.

And that’s how the day goes. Whenever she’s around, Henry’s also around. He’s sulky--rightly so, because the school is still buzzing about his fight, and his friends aren’t sticking up for him. But it puts me a sour mood.

His drama isn’t my drama.

Except it is, because Pearl and I seem to be the only two people in all of Saint Paul’s that aren’t gossiping about him or whispering insults behind his back. I hear all the things they’re calling him. Gay, of course, but a lot worse than that as well. Ugly words.

If I was someone else, I’d defend him. If I was, say, Pearl.

So, no, I don't get a chance to talk to Pearl about our differences and our issues and all the things we’ve never said to each other. Because she's busy combating the rampant speculation about her friend.

And she starts at the source. Where most of Saint Paul’s rumors begin, or where they become amplified, at least. She starts with Maggie.

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(first part: https://theprose.com/post/432343/trinity)

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(previous part: https://theprose.com/post/448269/trinity-26)

(next part: https://theprose.com/post/449246/trinity-28)

I’d pick windows.

Maybe I’d regret that but

I’m too tired to think about the thought of what I’d think after having thought which I’d have chosen.

Is it interesting that my thought is that I need windows because I need light but if I had only doors I could leave to go outside and see it?

Light has such power.

Or is it darkness that pulls the strings?

For me, the hero is light and the darkness, the villain.

But if I’m honest, I know they’re both one in the same. I know they’re both me.

Grief. It’s a sneaky bitch.

One day you can be completely ok and within the next breath you are not

There is this void that is impossible to fill

We either fill it with vices to get through

the pain or escape from it completely.

For me, I escape and I try to fill that pain with other vices that make my soul

content for the moment. Anything that will fill the empty hole inside my heart.

However, I am finding myself escaping more now so than ever.

I rather not sit and reflect on anything painful. I like to look forward and grief has a way of bringing you backwards.

I’m slowly learning that you have to sit and reflect on that pain to move forward because if you lock it up in a box, it will find a way to catch up to you.

I escaped it for 3 years and I still find myself escaping. A guy showed up a month after my mom passed, he made me happy at the moment where I didn’t have to think about what happened. He became my person, my support system, the person I ran to in doubt and he lifted me up like how my mom did. It became a crutch. I didn’t realize it until I started going to therapy...

Now that I’m on my own again, for the better. I’m slowly reopening that wound that was left before he walked into my life and it is painful.

I’m grieving both losses. The loss of my mom and what was with the relationship. You don’t have to lose someone from death to grieve. It still counts as a loss. It’s still a messy healing process. I’m grieving of what was before it became a mess. I’m grieving the person who I once loved to see him as the person I no longer knew. I grieve the ordinary moments. I grieved the life I had when it was good.

Reliving the past and trying to move forward all at once has my heart torn. I have all of these emotions and I don’t know what to do with it. I could scream and cry and some days I’m totally content.

I’m trying to change my perspective of the depths of loss and pain. I’m ready to get excited again and refill my cup that has runneth over. I am ready to start living for myself again without going backwards.

Who knew growth can be so painful?

There is hope that I can see light at the end of this tunnel. When in doubt, I think of caterpillars. How this little bitty insect can transform into a beautiful butterfly in just a matter of months.

However, there is no time span for humans of when we will get to that next step. Which can be painful, but also yet rewarding to know we are never done growing.

It is literally an endless journey of countless questions and doubt. The only thing to do is have a little bit of faith that someday you will get your feet planted again.

I try all of these things, like going to grief support and I’m 4 months into therapy, but there are some days I feel like will I ever make progress? When will the rain stop? it can’t rain forever.

But you see, grief has no time limit. There is no set date of when you will stop grieving.

I think of it as this analogy: there is ball inside of a glass jar. It starts off as small as a peanut and then it grows as big as a tomato. It never leaves the jar, the ball grows into the jar. You are the jar and grief is the ball. You continue to grow with it. You don’t grow away from it, you grow through it.

It’s apart of me. There is this huge hole of sadness, it’s right here where I can feel it even on my best days. The great memories I had with my mom were great. The sad memories I had are still very sad and it will always be.

What I’ve learned along the way, is how to take that grief and make it into a beautiful mess. I talk out loud to her, I see the signs she gives me and it will show up if you are willing to receive those little blessings in disguise. I dream of her. I talk to her in my dreams. I even feel her at night. She is still so much with me here in the physical world and to have that connection, I am grateful. I still am able to be connected, just a different way than normal. It’s not ideal. I would rather hug her in person instead of my dreams and call her instead of praying.

I want to say this sucks because given the circumstances, it really does. I lost her at the age of 23 and here I am standing at age 27. I still very much need my mom. I miss her advice, her hugs, her stern motivation speeches to help me in times where I feel so low, the jamming sessions in the car and just her presence alone. She won’t be there in person when I get married, she won’t be able to help me with pregnancy when that time comes, or have my babies call her Mawmaw. I won’t get any of that.

I was too young to lose her. I am not done needing her. A daughter will always need her mom.

Despite feeling cheated on life, I’m trying to take all the negatives and switch it into positives. Dwelling on her death will not make a difference, it will not bring her back, it will only hinder for me to move forward.

I’m thinking that those experiences that I have went through made me to be the person who I am today. It wasn’t my dream to start a grief support for my age group, but here I am having the idea to do one. I want to take that pain and make it into something beautiful. I want to help others by writing, talking, start something, because everyone has a story. If my experience could help one person out there, then that’s all that matters.

Before my mom got sick, my dream was to be a RN nurse at the Oschner in New Orleans where the amazing group of doctors and nurses helped my mom and discovered her rare lung disease.

I was in college when she had the transplant and evidentially I dropped out because I couldn’t focus on school with being the care taker of my mom. I could always go back.

For the longest time I wanted to go into that field, especially hearing only a few transplants are completely successful without developing some sort of cancer.

If I could research on how to stop a disease from someone else getting a second opportunity at life, I would in a heartbeat. My mom had a second chance at life and it was taken two years later. It’s not fair, but life isn’t fair.

Life is not handed to you on a silver platter, it’s honestly what you make it. It’s not meant to be sunshine and rainbows , you can’t get that outcome without the rain. So how do we deal with the rain?

I’m figuring that out. You just have to do what is best for you, even if you don’t know what that is. To start of, I name three things in my mind of what I want: peace, confidence, and gratefulness. My second question is, how do I get that?

For peace, I’ll find a hobby- like writing on this app, maybe get into painting, yoga, hop back on my moms spin bike, spin classes, hike, etc.

For confidence - I will stop my old habits of saying sorry too much, I’ll hold my head up high and carry myself differently.

Gratefulness- this sounds silly, but it has worked for me. I have a grateful rock. I found a rock in my yard, wrote in sharpie the word grateful and I pick it up every morning before work and say three things I am grateful for. Start affirmations as soon as you get up in the morning to get your day moving.

Some days can be so rough, that getting out of bed is a struggle. Grief really does make you feel like you are suffocating, waiting for a breath of air. What has helped me is, the 5 second rule from Mel Robbins. You count backwards from 5 and as soon as you get to one, you get up. You do something. Get out of head and make it better

Beat your brain from stopping you on making a change.

As someone who I look up to told me, ask yourself “what am I going to learn today” take that question and make it into your habit.

Grief is tricky, but it could also be a beautiful mess if you let it. Let it be messy and be patient with yourself. Find the beauty in the mess and Grow through the grief.

“Death leaves a heartache no one can heal and love leaves a memory that no one can steal”