Some nights, I wake gasping for air, cold sweat pooling on my skin. My subconscious drags me into this dark, desperate place where the impossible feels achingly real. In my dreams, I find myself begging—pleading—with otherworldly beings, higher powers, or sometimes even faceless strangers I can’t place. I beg them to bring her back to me.

The moment I wake, that hopelessness lingers, coiling around my chest with the weight of heavy chains. This is hell. No fire, no brimstone—just the absence of her.

What did I do to deserve this? The shame swirls within me, thick and relentless. It whispers questions I can’t answer: How could you fail her like this? Why couldn’t you have done more?

I’m haunted not just by her physical absence, but by the hollowness of my other two children. I see their sadness, barely hidden. I’m their mother, and I’m supposed to protect them, to hold their world together—but I can’t. Because I am broken, too. I am failing them, too.

There are nights when the weight of it all is too much, and thoughts creep in like unwelcome midnight visitors. Sometimes, I toy with the idea of walking into the street, lying down, and letting the night take me. Other times, as I drive—hands gripping the wheel, vision blurred by tears—I entertain the dangerous option of undoing my seatbelt… as if that single act could undo all my pain.

But no matter how loud the darkness gets, I know I don’t want to feel this way forever.

I can’t stop people from trying to comfort me with clichés that cut like dull knives:

“She’s in a better place.”

“She wouldn’t want you to be sad.”

Do you know how hollow those words sound when your chest feels like it’s caving in? They don’t erase the nightmares. They don’t untangle the knot in my stomach.

No one tells you that bereavement devours you whole, even when you’re trying to fight back. They don’t tell you it makes you question yourself, makes you hate yourself, makes the world feel foreign and wrong without the person you’ve lost.

But for now, I’m here. Still waking up. Still holding on. Still letting all this out—in dreams, on pages, in heavy silences—because maybe that’s the first step.

This pain is unbearable. It’s raw, ugly, and overwhelming—but it’s also part of loving someone so deeply, of losing a connection so profound that the void threatens to consume you.

I don’t have a neatly wrapped ending for this post. I only have the promise that, today, I will try. Try to get out of bed. Try to hold my loved ones closer. Try to give myself the grace I would give anyone else.