It is a crippling thing, this sensation that a huge hole had been punched through my chest, excising my most vital organs and leaving ragged, unhealed gashes around the edges that continued to throb and bleed despite the passage of time. Rationally, I know my lungs must still be intact, yet I gasp for air and my head spins like my efforts yield me nothing. My heart must be beating, too, but I can't hear the sound of my pulse in my ears; my hands feel blue with cold. I curl inward, hugging my ribs to hold myself together. I scramble for my numbness, my denial, but it evades me.

       And yet, I found I could survive. I was alert, I felt the pain—the aching loss that radiated out from my chest, sending wracking waves of hurt though my limbs and head—but it was manageable. I could live through it. It didn’t feel like the pain had weakened over time, rather that I’d grown strong enough to bear it.
I wonder how long this can last. Maybe someday, years from now—if the pain would just decrease to the point where I could bear it—I would be able to look back on those few short months that would always be the best in my life. And, if it were possible that the pain would ever soften enough to allow me to do that, I was sure that I would feel grateful for as much time as he’d given me. More than I’d asked for, more than I’d deserved. Maybe someday I’d be able to see it that way.

      But what if this hole never got any better? If the raw edges never healed? If the damage was permanent and irreversible?

I was like a lost moon—my planet destroyed in some cataclysmic, disaster-movie scenario of desolation—that continued, nevertheless, to circle in a tight little orbit around the empty space left behind, ignoring the laws of gravity.