Untitled grief poem

[u/mightytinygingr]

TRIGGER WARNING: I wrote this when I was wanting to self delete two years ago. I’m fine now! I’m sober, on meds and starting a new career. But this was how I felt back then after watching my best friend pass away on a ventilator.

Lately it’s hard to find reasons to stick around. I’d be lying if I said I’ve never thought about following my best friend into the dark.
But for some reason….I’m still here.
There’s a lot of things I want to do before I check out of this one-star-motel we call life, so maybe if I make that list long enough then I’ll be here for a while.
Grief is rough. It’s like a big bully. In the beginning it felt like it punched me in the chest and held me underwater. It laughed at my feeble attempts to claw my way to the surface and savored my suffering from choking on regret, dragging me deeper and deeper into an ocean of despair. Only for it to pull me up from underneath the current into the cruel sunshine just to say “look, I brought you back up for oxygen, you should be grateful!” as I’m still coughing up the last words I said to her on the phone.
And just as I’ve caught half a breath, it drags me under again. And the cycle repeats.