it actually happened twice.

I changed when I stopped thinking she was going to die.

Every morning I woke up and I was sure she was already dead, but they had yet to tell me.

I never expected it to happen. In retrospect, I should have been at least a little suspicious, but during the build-up I suspected nothing. Then everything changed, and I spent every waking moment in terror, because it was entirely possible that I was existing in the period of time between her death and my knowledge of her death.

Then, just as unexpectedly, my heart stopped lurching the rest of me awake every morning. I wasn't living in fear anymore. I wasn't having fits of hysteria at the lunch table as everyone stared anymore. I was and am still afraid, but it's the kind of fear I can breathe around.

I can't give you a date for either times I changed, because it wasn't like that. Time was a concept that had to watch on the sidelines like everyone else. It had good company: it sat next to all the other things I was supposed to be paying attention to.

Now I can tell you the date again. The time, even. We may be in the middle of a pandemic, but I've been doing better than ever, because she's alive, and I can be sure about it.