“The Season That Stuck to My Skin”

When I heard the news about you, it was a hot and humid summer day. Nothing remarkable, just another Saturday on the calendar. I was working when my family came to tell me you were gone.

"Gone where?" I asked.

Just gone.

What a strange, empty phrase. A quiet way of saying someone no longer exists on this earth.

The moment those words landed, I went through every emotion: confusion, shock, sadness, fear, anger, and apathy. And then I shut down. I stepped outside to breathe, only to be met by the thick, suffocating air, June's humid embrace clinging to me like a relative you never liked but had to hug anyway.

To this day, I cannot stand the humidity. It is too familiar. Too connected to the moment, the world tilted. That summer, I walked and ran for miles, trying to distance myself from your absence.

I am tired of letting the heavy afternoon air punish me, as if sweating beneath the sun could somehow atone for your death. I run in the heat, chasing a medal I will never wear. I was taught to cry in private, not in public, so I turn my sorrow inward, punishing myself for the ache in my heart instead of grieving out loud.

I have never fully understood why you chose to leave the way you did. For so long, I blamed myself. It was easy to take on the shame because when someone ends their life, the world tends to look at the ones left behind as if we should have seen it coming.

But my loved ones did not know the weight I was carrying after losing you.

Some said I was “too much.” I say they were not enough.

Yes, people were around, but I often felt like their comfort came with limits. Like they wanted me to feel better, so they would not have to feel worse.

A few days after you died, I bought a book about grief. I read twenty pages, rolled down the window, and threw it out.

I could not bear the way the author kept referring to you as "the deceased loved one." So clinical. So cold. Or maybe I just was not ready to see it on paper. I was not ready to admit you were really gone.

I kept searching for comfort, not knowing that grief itself was its own strange form of comfort. Eventually, I packed away my feelings, taped up the box, shoved it into the dark corner of my mind, and walked away.

But you cannot heal what you do not feel. And eventually, the box breaks open. The grief returns, asking to be seen.

The truth is, I never wanted to pack you away.

We had plans. We were young. We still had so much life ahead of us. How do you fold all that into a box? You don’t.

You leave the memories and the love out in the open, where they can breathe. Where you can stumble over them now and then, like old shoes you never throw out. They remind you of where you have been.

Who cares if others do not understand?

I wish you were still here. I wish I had let myself grieve slower. Softer. Louder.

Our life was slow and loud. We took up space. So why should your memory not?

It has been fifteen years. I am still sad. Still angry. Still missing you.

I wish you had seen how deeply you mattered and could have known your impact. But I will keep saying your name and telling your story so others will know —that you were beautiful, flawed, kind, and honest.

And now, I am ready.

Not to forget. Not to move on. But to live lighter. To lay down the heavy guilt. To let the pain soften, like morning light on a storm-worn window.

I will always carry you. But I do not have to carry the ache.

So this year, I let go of the “what-ifs” and hold onto the “we dids.”

I will think of you often. I will send you my love. Still. Always.

And on quiet nights, when the sky turns that deep shade of blue you loved, I will whisper to the stars:

“wish you were here.”