"I Miss Her"

Sometimes I say nothing at all.  I just disappear for awhile.  I sleep longer.  I don't bother with makeup.  But sometimes I have to say something or explode.  The pain I carry in my heart is just too heavy and I start to feel like I'm suffocating.  So I say the socially acceptable thing which is:   "I miss her."

But friends, it is so much more.
I've harnessed it now so that I don't fall apart at work, so that I don't lose it...as often...while driving in the car.  I still break into tears unexpectedly but much less often than before.  Am I stronger now?  Or am I just used to the suffering?  The way someone who is abused starts to expect nothing more for herself?

How can I explain what it is like to carry the pain of her absence with me every day, every moment?  There are probably no words unless you are in the same miserable hell I am and if that is true, well, I suspect I'll see it in your eyes when we pass each other and we won't need to say a word.

I'll say this:
It is exhausting.  It never stops.  The gnawing pain and the constant heartache...it never sleeps.  Cory- her smile, her hands, her eyes, her laugh.. I see them in my dreams.  And likewise, every frame of the roadside...they come to me in my sleep, too.

The sorrow bleeds into every joy, every small win.  The shadow is perpetually cast.  There is no escape.

So, if I say "I miss her.", just know the depth of that statement is so much more.  In that moment, I am drowning.  If it weren't overwhelming me, I'd just suffer silently the way I so often do.