I was lucky that Brittney agreed to go to the movie with me. It might have destroyed me if I were alone.

Most of the movie passed with a self aware detachment. I couldn’t lose myself in the characters, I could only see them as a gimmick, a plaything of the writer made to manipulate.

However, the pre-funeral was a powerful moment. There was a symphony of whimpers echoing across the theater and I remembered my own experience writing eulogies. I held out from crying for longer than most, I think. Mine didn’t come until the grief for Grandma came scrabbling up my throat, an amorphous black hole trying to claw its way out of my chest.

I think I’m building castles around that hole. I know nothing can, or even should, fill it. But something tells me that I need to let the people that I love and that love me close to it. To let them touch it, even though it burns like antiseptic, and bring it a little healing. Awareness. Comfort.

I hole up in this whole house, hiding that little black hole and letting it suck me in. I’m so tied to this place. It was the first place I felt truly wanted. It was the first place I craved as home.

The howling that I do when I think of leaving it might be my own, or it might just belong to my demons. Welding myself into this brick box might just be what’s suffocating me.

This is the first time I’ve felt like I might need to leave. A shiver is climbing down my throat. It’s made of fear and hope and rum.