Not Grief

Today was heavier than I expected it to be.

After a beautiful weekend full of sunshine, movement, and learning new things—I felt the weight of all that I’ve experienced in the last twelve months settle into my body today.

It isn’t entirely unexpected.

Two days ago marked one year since my dad died.

And in just a few days, it will be one year since I learned the truth about so much of what the man I had chosen to invest myself into had done—how fully I had been deceived, and the terrible things he was capable of.

It was the explosion of my reality.

The permanent loss of what I believed to be a place of comfort, friendship, and mutual respect—layered on top of watching my dad die.

Today, I felt that weight in my body.

It started as anxiety first thing in the morning. I went to the doctor for a checkup, and my blood pressure was unusually high. I don’t think that was a coincidence.

As the morning went on, so did the heaviness. A quiet but persistent sense of unease.

It wasn’t grief.

It wasn’t sadness or heartbreak.

It was something else.

It felt like the physical imprint of everything I lived through over the past year—the stored stress, the shock, the moments my system registered that I was not safe. The unrelenting pain and emotional bleeding.

I tried different things to relieve it. Movement, distraction, shifting my environment.

But it was relentless.

A reminder that the body holds onto what the mind tries to make sense of—and doesn’t always release it on command.

I had a couple of meetings in the afternoon, and as I moved through them, something began to shift. Slowly, subtly, my body started to let go.

By dinnertime, I was regulated again—sitting at the kitchen table, listening to Jack and his friends laugh as they worked on their prom-posals.

Life, continuing.

I don’t have words that fully capture the magnitude of what I went through this time last year—or the tidal wave of emotional and psychological impact it had on me.

And I don’t think people who haven’t experienced something like that can fully understand it.

And that’s okay.

I don’t need them to.

I know what happened.

I know none of it was okay.

I know I did not deserve any of it.

I know it was never a reflection of me.

I know his behavior is not unique to me.

And I know this too—

I felt it.

All of it.

I didn’t numb it.

I didn’t run from it.

I didn’t abandon myself inside of it.

I lived through a kind of pain I didn’t know existed…

and I stayed.

And today, even in the weight of it, I can feel how far I’ve come.

And how lucky I am to have escaped.