It’s four in the morning. There’s a storm raging outside, and it has been raging for so long that I’ve lost track of the hours. I thought for sure it was a hurricane, the kind of thing that slammed Ft. Lauderdale and nearly killed me—the thought of going through another hurricane actually caused me to have a minor panic attack.

Dominic only laughed at me. “This is just a little squall. Nothin’ to be scared of.”

It doesn’t feel like a little squall, it feels like a damn hurricane. The boat is getting tossed around like a toy in a bathtub, rocketing down the side of one massive wave only to course up another. We twist and tilt this way and that, and my heart is pounding in my chest fit to burst. If I close my eyes, I’m back in the bathtub all over again, trapped in by rubble, hearing the storm howl like a maddened god. I don’t close my eyes.

I don’t dare.

I haven’t slept in I don’t know how long.

I’ve watched every movie on the boat, one after the other, on the tiny, aged TV in the common room of the boat—I don’t know the terminology of boats, but I’m sure there’s a nautical term for it. I watched all those movies, and then tried to read to distract myself, and then I tried cooking—I’ve baked three batches of cookies, made a giant pot of stew, and another pot of soup. The men are working through the storm, taking turns to catch sleep, and the ones on shift make frequent trips to the galley to wolf down bowls of soup or stew, and to shove cookies into their mouths chased by gulps of coffee—the coffee pot on this boat is never, ever empty, which is the first thing I learned when I came aboard.

And now, it’s four in the morning and I’m scared and bored at the same time, which is a bizarre mixture of emotions.

So, I’m journaling.

I don’t want to. I feel a million thoughts and feelings simmering just below the surface, things I’ve put off, buried, bottled up.

I want them to stay there, repressed down deep.

I don’t want to deal with them.

I don’t want to think about them.

I don’t want to let them out.

But yet, here I am, in my quarters, sitting cross-legged on my hard little cot, a blanket around my shoulders and another across my lap, with my notebook on my thigh and a thermos of green tea nearby.

Fuck.

Fine.

Here it goes.

I’m going to write down five letters, which I have not written nor thought nor spoken—through constant and intentional avoidance—for many, many months.

H E N R Y.

Fuck. Fuck.

I’m fighting sobs as I sit here, staring at those letters, struggling to see the page through tears.

I haven’t allowed myself to think about him almost at all in the nineteen months and thirteen days that have passed since his death.

Weird—I didn’t have to stop and think, stop and count, I just knew, instinctively, exactly how many months and days it has been since Henry died. He was admitted to the pediatric oncology ward on Valentine’s Day, twenty-one months ago.

We buried him nineteen months and eleven days ago.

I couldn’t think about him.

I still can’t.

Just writing those five letters of his name has taken everything I have. My pen is shaking in my hand. My lips are pressed tightly together. I’m breathing hard—my lungs refuse to inflate all the way. My eyes burn. Sting. They’re hot. The page is blurry.

I haven’t allowed myself to really cry in…God, I don’t know how long. I cried—I sobbed, shattered, utterly broken—the day he died. A few tears trickled down my cheeks now and then, in the days that followed—slow, dripping, single tears. Like a leaky faucet—DRIP…DRIP…DRIP. I couldn’t cry, though. Not really. After that initial shattering, I couldn’t really cry anymore.

Why?

I’m not sure. I haven’t cried since then.

Wait—no. That’s not true: I cried when I discovered Christian had left.

Have I coped? Have I grieved? Have I mourned?

I don’t know.

I saw a therapist—I saw two, actually. The first was Craig, who ended up referring me to a female therapist who actually was able to get me to open up a little, in a way Craig never could. Because with Craig, I only saw him as a man, a MALE, rather than someone to whom I could trust my innermost turmoil. I told him I needed a different counselor, and he referred me to a colleague. I liked her immediately upon our first appointment, and she really did help me to come to terms with the tragic loss of Henry, to some degree at least.

Craig called me a few weeks later to ask me to go out on a date with him.

And then there was a second date, and a third, and a fourth. On the fourth date, something happened: he kissed me…and I liked it. A lot. I was so needy, so vulnerable, and so lonely. So angry, so consumed by—I don’t even know what. A million burning emotions, and when Craig kissed me, they all exploded, the sweet relief of physical touch—something I craved, something I needed—something that was consuming me. I never even stopped to think. I just—I ACTED. I let myself have it. Christian had abandoned me, and I was alone and needed comfort. So I took it.

Craig got me naked, and I got him naked, and we were kissing and he was touching me, and I was touching him. It felt GOOD. I liked it. But it wasn’t…it just wasn’t RIGHT. He wasn’t Christian. He didn’t feel right, didn’t sound right. Didn’t touch me the right way. There was nothing wrong with the way Craig kissed or touched me or sounded or felt, it was just…WRONG. I don’t know how else to put it.

So I stopped it.

I cried when he left.

And I think that was the last time I truly cried.

Why am I thinking about this, using journal space on it? Maybe because that moment with Craig showed me that I NEEDED Christian. That even when I try to move on, I can’t.

When was the last time I thought about Henry? I don’t even know. Part of me feels horrible about that…like I’ve betrayed him, as if by refusing to even think his name, or call his sweet little face into my mind’s eye, that I’ve forgotten him—

As if I COULD forget him.

I just…I think I instinctively knew that if I let myself think about him, I’d start crying and I’d never stop. There’d be no end to the sorrow that would emerge from me. It would just…devour me. Consume me. Drown me.

Even now, I’m afraid of that.

I’m afraid of thinking about Henry too much, because I’m afraid I’ll start crying and never stop.

My hand is cramping, I’m exhausted, and the storm is finally starting to die out a little. Which means, maybe, I’ll be able to sleep.

It’s worth a shot.

---

I don’t know how long I slept. I haven’t even really gotten up yet, haven’t checked my phone, haven’t looked outside, haven’t even left my bed, yet. It feels like I slept a long time, though. I’ve got that groggy, disoriented, sluggish feeling you get after sleeping for something like eighteen or twenty hours, you know?

I woke up sobbing again.

I dreamed of Henry again.

I saw him. I felt him. I smelled him. He’d be a little over three by now, but in the dream he was alive, and he’d never died, and he was just as I want to remember him, as he was before he started showing signs of being sick—a sweet, happy, warm, joyful little bundle of perfection. Those blue eyes, so bright. His little hands, chubby and reaching for everything, grabbing onto everything. His cheeks and chin, so much like Christian’s. His hair, dark like mine.

He was real. He was alive, in my arms, and it was pure joy, for those few moments.

And that’s when I woke up—with the realization that it was just a dream crashing through me, the knowledge that Henry was gone.

How long did I sob, before I got it under control? I don’t know. Too long, and not long enough. I had to force myself to stop. Had to growl at myself to be quiet, had to clamp my teeth down on the sobs, had to wipe the tears away and sniff the snot away and blink and breathe until I could pretend like I’m in control.

But I’m not in control.

At all.

I think it’s a good thing this is a dry boat—meaning there’s no alcohol on board. Not a drop. Dominic says it ensures the crew is always in control and sober and ready for anything, and it makes putting into port and getting free time all the better for everyone. If there were alcohol on this boat, I’d be drinking it right now. I’d probably be drinking it all the time. Every moment.

Which…is a problem.

There’s a period of time I genuinely just don’t remember—the weeks after I finally forced myself to start eating again, forced myself to leave the bed. Which I think I only did because I realized I couldn’t will myself to just die.

That’s what I wanted, I think: to die.

To just…stop being alive, so I could be with Henry, and so I could escape the pain.

When I finally realized I wasn’t going to die, I started eating…and started drinking.

Christian and I both hit the bottle pretty hard, during that period.

It was the only thing that could numb the pain.

I still worry I’ll use that coping mechanism even still. But, I haven’t allowed myself to drink, not since the hurricane.

Up until then I’d been drinking myself to sleep every single night. Was it low-key alcoholism, maybe? I don’t know. Self-medication, certainly.

Where am I going with all this?

I don’t know. Nowhere. I don’t have a point. I don’t have anything specific I’m trying to say, this time.

It’s all a mess inside my head. Even with all I’ve written so far, it’s just the tiniest little scratch on the surface.

It’s like being a diver free-swimming with fins and a tank and a wet suit, swimming down and down to the limits of human endurance, which is the nothing at all, not in comparison to the true depths of the ocean.

That’s me.

That’s what’s within me.

What I’ve dredged up so far is just a tiny sliver, and lurking beneath it all is a Marianas Trench of heartache and sorrow and anger and guilt.

It’s easier to pretend it’s not there, to just go through the motions of being alive. On board this boat, it’s far too easy. But I can’t do that.

I just cannot allow myself to do that any longer.

Because really, that’s what I’ve been doing so far, isn’t it? Hiding? Running? Pretending?

How much longer can I do it? It’s festering inside me. Rotting. Fermenting.

I can’t go through the motions anymore.

I can’t keep burying and repressing and hiding and running and bottling.

I am in flux—in life, and as a person:

Who was I? Who am I now? Who will I be? Who do I WANT to be?

I hear Dominic outside my cabin. He’s knocking, telling me the storm has passed and they need me to put together more food—the stew and the soup and the cookies are all gone.

I’m needed.

There’s that, at least.