PART 3: Choosing to Let Color Back In

I really struggled figuring out how to start this story, so we'll start at the end.

I'm putting ice on my face to calm the nerves around my eyes and forehead. Why, you ask? I spent a couple of hours crying it out.

Grief knocked today and I welcomed her. The difference this time is that I did not drown. We sat together, I cried so hard and listened to very sad, heart-wrenching music. I gave her my whole Sunday, but I did not drown.

And honestly, I've never felt more proud of myself. The girl I was a few years back would have drowned, but this time I did not.

For so long, there has been so much to life for everyone else, but grief seemed to be the thing that easily rolled off my tongue. Happiness felt so fleeting. I had packed so much of the hurt in the corner of my mouth and smiled the pain away since that's what society expects.

But I didn't want to live like that anymore. I remember reading somewhere that honoring them is putting in the work that needs to be done to heal. I looked at how gray my life had become, and I decided things could be different.

So I finally sat in front of a therapist as her words tore through my entire soul, the pain I had stored cracking through my jaws. I swear I have never felt so much pain in my life before.

But she told me something that changed everything: "You have enmeshment to the dead, and you can't have one foot in the ground and another on earth." She said I need to seek out my own identity. I need to seek out joy as often as possible.

That's when I realized what I want to do with this life I've been given. I want to be able to tell you how much I lived when we finally meet. I want to show you all the places I got to travel to. I want to share the beautiful joys that I got to experience with the time I had on this earth.

I don't want grief to mute everything anymore.

I can do this for us.

In this life, I'm choosing to lay down my grief and let color into my life. To enjoy more sunsets. To honor you not by staying stuck in the gray, but by living fully—the way you would have wanted me to.Because loving you means learning to live again.