diana cowgill

I tell Kyle that I’ve become a ghost, and that I’m haunting him. I feel like a ghost. Like an unsettled soul stuck in some horrendous waiting room. A liminal space that I’m waiting waiting waiting to be released from. Be released from. Passive. I don’t know when I’ll get out of here.  

Physically, I’ve been taking up less space by the day. I’m too thin. Way, way too thin. My weight has passed beyond the line that I’ve long treated as a hard stop. Below this and you need to reevaluate everything. Beyond this and you’re in trouble…

But here I am. Deep in the danger zone with no end in sight. And I don’t think I can get out of it until some of this grief lifts.

Kyle took me out to one of our favorite lunch spots a few days ago. It’s this bougie little country store that feels very LA, but also Greek, and it’s pretty and polished enough to feel a bit like Disneyland. My dad would have loved it.

We were waiting in line and Kyle felt me droop, and he asked if I was okay. If I’d just gotten really sad again. I hadn’t. My mind was blank. 

But my body felt like it had just lost a bunch of blood.

That’s where the grief is at its most obvious. In my body itself. The shallow breaths, the fluttering heart, the abrupt change from fine to not fine.