It’s Thursday. And I’m on the other side of it. And I haven’t cried. Which, for me, feels good.

Peter died on Thursday which makes those days just weird for me. I want to reach through time and grab his hand. Drag him back or through or forward or sideways. Any direction that heals him and brings him back to before.

I hate Thursdays because my mind tingles with emotional awareness and sensitivity. I feel like a paralyzed axle centering an off key, rusty carousel swarming with screaming children.

I want quiet on Thursdays. I want silence and solitude and isolation and the woods and the rain and birdsong that trills and then quiets.

I want to be left alone. And I want to be in the presence of my friends. I want to luxuriate I. Mary Oliver poetry even though it’s so beautiful it makes me feel bad because I feel like I have squandered my gift.

I want silent music and musical silence.

I want to be with my dogs in the mountains and I want them to settle beside me in a meadow while we watch clouds sweep over the horizon.

I want to hear Peter’s voice. And I have a voicemail saved from him but listening to it is just pain and I am weary of pain.

I want to be alone in my thoughts but wish people could read my thoughts so they wouldn’t ask me questions or demand my attention.

I want paradoxes that do not feel exhausting or contradictory or wearying. I live within the fatigue of my contradictions and hate to love them and love to hate them.

I breathe through Thursdays. And today, I made it to the other end of Thursday without crying. I know crying is healthy and good and natural and valid.

But I’m sick of my tears. So getting to the other end of Thursday without weeping g is good enough for me.