Broken

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

-Ernest Hemingway


When a person is part of your life for a long time; you can't help but feel the loss keenly. Like a submarine under deep water it buckles and eventually crushes the heart. I tried for a time to avoid it; but could not. I lost the closest person in the world to me, my best friend and my partner in all things.

I sat in the emptiness that was our home for two weeks. The kittins I loved so dearly gone, no internet, no cable, no phone and my car across town and out of reach. It put my feelings front and center, I had nothing to distract me from those thoughts and I had to face them raw and naked.

It grinded me down into a shallow depression, a listless lethargy. My health moved between fair and bad as it always does. Even a "friend" took opportunity to kick me while I was still down, but a special few rose to the occasion and helped me pull through it.

Hemingway was right: the world breaks us. But we heal, grow stronger and overcome.
I live with my family now far away from my friends, far away from the life I knew. It doesn't bother me that I am far away; a distance of miles is meaningless. It bothers me that the true distance, the unfathomable barrier between people is wider then it has ever been. I could be a million miles away but the distance between me and everyone else is greater still.