My Favorite Pen

My heart felt like it had been ripped into pieces and thrown into a juicer.

I was reeling from the loss of someone while also living in utter denial- “Maybe if I just” was the beginning of too many sentences.

I would open my journal and scribble for hours, plans, things I could change about myself, things I could do or say differently with the ultimate goal of making myself deserving of a love that was not mine.

Until, mid-sentence, my pen stopped writing.

Its inevitable death felt all-too-sudden. No slow fade, no licking or scribbling to get it to come back, it was just done. My favorite pen I’d carried around with me during an especially difficult time, shiny gold and branded with the words “creative genius”, my ultimate hype- man. My very favorite.

When a pen dies there’s not much you can do except get a new one.

And all of my grief hit me at once. I was mourning old versions of myself, the hope she had and the love she had given and the time she spent and the life she wanted so desperately to make work. And yes, I was grieving my pen, my partner, my travel buddy, my super power. Next to the grief was an immense weight of gratitude in my heart. For all that she gave me, all that we shared, for introducing me to my own heart in a way I had not experienced before.