Just Another Manic Thursday
Thoughts on the first June 4th that didn't overwhelm me in eight years.
For years, I hated June 4th long before it arrived. It lingered in the corners of May, waiting. A date that demanded anticipation. A date I lived through twice: once in my imagination and once when it finally came.
This year, for the first time in eight years, it arrived quietly. Just another sunrise. Rain against the window. Coffee cooling too quickly. The ordinary rhythm of a day that once felt impossible to survive. Nothing major happened.
Yet.
And perhaps that’s the point. The night passed. I am sitting in the clouds of today, watching the rain drift by, lungs intact, heart intact, undoubtedly and unbearably alive.
And still, I mourn. I haven’t been to her grave since the funeral. Five years have stretched between us, diverging into alternate realities. My mind has spent so much time inventing different endings that I still struggle to make peace with the one that exists. But this, without question, is now.
I used to think June 4th was teaching me that everything good can end in a second. After all, I learned that lesson twice.
But maybe that isn’t what remains. Maybe the lesson is that life keeps happening afterward. The rain still falls. Dogs still need walking. People still call. New griefs arrive. New joys do too. The world, indifferent and miraculous, continues. And so do we.
I often wonder how many more times I can write about what this day evokes before it becomes another burden. How many essays can be carved from the same wound before they begin to collapse under their own weight.
But perhaps I’m not writing about the same thing anymore.
Some years I wrote about survival.
Some years I wrote about death.
Some years I wrote about guilt.
This year, I think I’m writing about time.
About what happens when a date that once held you hostage loosens its grip. About how grief slowly transforms from a storm into a landscape. About the strange realization that healing is not forgetting, it is no longer living the day twice.
The sunrise came. The rain fell. And for the first time, June 4th felt less like an anniversary and more like a reminder:
Life is not promised. But neither is suffering. And somehow, after everything, I am still here.