I’m finding it difficult to learn how to navigate this new normal without my dad. I dream about him all the time, I want to call him daily, I want to send random texts. Everything reminds me of him. I would hear people say that when people passed away, but you never really know about it until you are in that position yourself.

It’s been a few weeks now, but I still have to remind myself that it’s real. They say it gets easier with time, but the ache will always be there, and I don’t doubt that.

I’ve felt as if I have trapped myself in my own world since his passing. Like, my world has stopped but everyone else’s has kept going. I go through my days, but I know I’m blocking myself from something and I don’t know if it’s the grief that just wants to come pouring out at all times of the day or if it’s something more than that. I think about all the things I told you I’d do, even if they sounded crazy.

You never thought they were though; I think you knew that I’d be doing something like this. I’m such an open book, I always have been. I want people to know everything that goes through my mind, even if you reminded me that sometimes it’s not always good. If this is the process, then so be it.

Someone told me to truly work through my emotions and this time before life got in the way again, but no one reminds you that life is always moving at such a high speed and sometimes it moves too quick for you to pick up the remaining pieces. This weekend was the first weekend in months that I did nothing. I stayed home, rarely answered my phone and just simply did things on my own time. It’s probably one of the reasons why I feel like I’ve been struggling lately. I just needed to sit with it, work through the little things that I could.

You were my guide. You talked me through every bad day I had. You reminded me that everything bad that went through my head was just a bad day out of the many good days that were to come back around. I miss the sound of your voice telling me that I’ll get through it because I am the person that I am and because you raised me.

Writing this is my outlet now because I get to write about you. Maybe one day all my writings won’t be about you, but for now it’s all that goes through my head, and I don’t know how else to work through this grief.

My new normal consists of reading through the last messages we had together. I had sent you a collage of pictures of the two of us. I told you that I love you forever and you responded with you, “Love you forever and eternity.” and you weren’t wrong. I won’t get a new phone because I can’t risk losing those messages with you.

Everything I do, I’m always thinking of you.

-K.