So Heavy

Jennifer Estes
2 min readMay 9, 2024
Photo by Rodrigo Ramos on Unsplash

Depression hangs all over me. It permeates every single cell. It clouds around me as my sad, sorry aura. I am still wondering, who the fuck I am. It’s been two years, seven months, and twenty-five days since Tom died.

My partner, best friend, soul mate, deepest love, and most aggravating roommate. He was the one I chose, and I was the one he chose. We were limited to thirteen years, five months, and eight days together.

I was a part of we, now it’s just me.

Who am I now? It haunts me every day. How did I get in this state? I knew who I was before Tom, so why does it elude me now that he is gone?

My mood is empty, sad, lonely, afraid, and lost. Why am I here, why did God take him? He was the happy one, the one everybody loved, and the one who wanted to live. Why is this my life? I struggle each day to find meaning in it all.

Others do not understand how my grief is in every cell of my body. He is on my mind all day, every day. I want to talk about him in every conversation, but now I see the looks when I bring him up. Or I mention grief and others are confused, why is it she is grieving? Oh yeah….

So I don’t talk about him much anymore. He is still there, I just choose not to say it. I keep it to myself and then I feel worse. Society expects me to move on. There is no such thing as moving on, only…

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Jennifer Estes

I am a widow, a mortician, a mom, and grandma. I write about grief, caregiving, substance use disorder, and the death care industry.