Secondary loss

There Is No Secondary Loss.

They talk about secondary loss like it's a separate room. Like grief has hallways. Like you walk through the first door, the big one, and down the hall there are smaller doors. The loss of who you thought you'd become. The loss of the future you built in your head. The loss of the routines, the roles, the version of yourself that only existed because he did.

I don't have hallways. I have one room. And it's on fire.

For a parent who lost their only child, there is no secondary loss. There's no primary, no tertiary, no order to stand them in. It's not a list. It's not a house with rooms you can close off one at a time. It's one loss, and it doesn't have edges. I can't find where Ryan ends and the rest of it begins.

22 of my 52 years on this planet went into him. Not passively. Not just showing up. Carefully. Thoughtfully. On purpose. I built something. I built Dad. And I can't separate the loss of that from the loss of him, because they were never two things. They were the same thing.

I can't think about Ryan walking through the door without the whole weight of it coming with him. Not just the great conversations we'd have today. All the ones we're never going to have. Not just helping him become a man. Helping him become the man. The husband. The father. All of it was already moving, already in motion, and now it's just... stopped. And I'm standing in the wreckage trying to figure out which piece is the "real" loss and which pieces are the ones I'm supposed to grieve later, separately, like they'll wait their turn.

They won't.

They're all here. All at once. All the time.

I've said before that I died the day Ryan died. That's not accurate. Not technically. I'm still here. I don't know why. I go through the motions of a day and I don't know what force is moving me through it.

I've said I'm existing right now. Not surviving. I looked at that word again, survival, and it asks something of you. Fight. Want. Desire. Some kind of strength reaching toward tomorrow. I don't have that today. I wake up. I go through my day. I go to bed. Repeat.

I'm a liar now. Every single day. I have to be. This heavy blanket is mine to carry, not yours. So when you ask how I'm doing, "fine," "okay," "getting through it," that's all bullshit. It's a lie.

I can't even answer a simple fucking question like that honestly, because the honest answer doesn't fit in the space you're allowed to ask it in.

I'm not sure I know how to end this post.

Maybe that's the point. Maybe that's the most honest thing I can say about a loss with no edges.

It doesn't end. It doesn't wrap up into something tidy with a lesson at the bottom. I don't have one today.

I just have the room. And the fire. And whatever this is I'm doing instead of surviving.