Adrift.

Tonight I'm filled with loneliness and grief. It keeps me awake.

It is a terrible thing to go through my life without my mother's love. I don't know how to do it. Wherever she was, that was home. I feel untethered and adrift without her to return to. She died almost two years ago, with me at her side. She lived fully until the last three days. Then she was gone.

"In those moments we were so close our love was right there -- so deep, so open, and alive. I take consolation in knowing that when [she] went, there was not a shred of doubt in our minds about how much we meant to each other, how much we loved each other." -- John Porcellino, King Cat

And then there's the grief of my marriage.

I'm lonely with this man, beyond description.

He is the man who forget to tell me when my grandmother called to say my aunt had died.

He is the man who, when I told about a moment of profound grief about my mother, asked what kind of bagel I was eating at the time.

He is the man who waited more than a week to talk to me about it when I confessed that my stepfather used to ask to borrow my underpants to masturbate.

None of this is callousness on his part. He just doesn't know how to respond, so he withdraws. He's ashamed of himself when it happens.

But in the meantime, I'm standing here alone, exposed, and sad.

I don't know how much longer I can bear it, or the struggle to fix it.