Now it's five years later, and I've just now found some strength to tell my story. In the last five years I have battled trauma, isolation, mental illness, suicide, more loss, just to start. But I have also gained. I've gained closer relationships to my family, clarity on which battles I should fight and which I should let go, diagnoses to facilitate my mental and physical healing, new perspectives of how the world really works, parts of myself I thought I had long gone lost, and even a love I never thought I could experience again. And yes, at one point, I could not see this possibility of the woman I am now. Sometimes I still can't believe this is real, that this new reality is real, that his loss is real. But finding friends who let me express myself honestly, family that lets me be ugly and messy, a community that embraces the unpredictability, a partner that understands that he won't understand, has saved my life. And I finally feel like maybe I wasn't really alone that whole time like I thought. Maybe I needed to feel just a little bit safer, a little more understood, a little more related to, to really ask for what I needed...