It was and continues to be horrible. I struggled with depression effort, but I never knew how low I could sink. It'll be two years in April and that makes no sense to say. Two years? I lived on a second-to-second basis when it first happened- describing it doesn't come close to really getting anyone to comprehend (not that I'd wish that understanding on anyone) how every... next... moment is a like an eternity, a nightmare of incomprehension. Looking around, waiting for someone to end your life too, for someone to say that it's not real. I had no appetite, weird flashbacks from every period of my life, consuming only coffee and cigarettes. I had no will to be awake while also finding sleep too horrifying. Dreams full of his face, nightmares about him being lost and alone in death, and then wake up alone. The happy dreams were worse than the scary ones, waking up with hope. After a while, he started breaking up with me in dreams and that hurt even more. My family's reaction was incredible. My parents were living in Venezuela at the time, my older sister in Australia- neither easy places from which to travel to the US. But they all flew in as soon as they heard he was in a coma (meningitis: fever one Saturday, coma on Monday, dead by Wednesday). I can't express to them enough how much that meant and how much it helped me, even if I'm still recovering. His mother is still one of my best friends. She is an amazing woman and while we obviously played a much different role in his life, she and I understand each other's grief as two of the most important women in his life. Everyone grieves differently and obviously men and women don't fit into just two categories of grief but I felt as though there was a definite divide between genders. Or maybe we are just similar in the specific ways that we lost our minds. Anyway, his parents were divorced and some shit happened and there was a lot of anger and I ended up feeling mostly rejected by his father's side of the family and two of his closest friends. I bear them no ill and I hope one day they will explain to me exactly how I "grieved wrong" or offended them (I did some stupid things, acte in some crazy ways for sure) and I hope we can love him together again at some point. But with his mom's side of the family, I feel at home and I love them all. I actually made a sort-of animation about this, if anyone cares to view. It's the only post at: thedemongodofthenorth.blogspot.com