Day two was no different than day one.
The shock wore off, but the grief remained.
Maybe that’s what day two really is. The day after the decision. The day after the adrenaline. The day after the final conversation. The day when there is nothing left to do except sit with the reality of what has been done.
I severed ties with my entire family.
I closed the door on my father, and in doing so, I closed the final door.
There were no more conversations to have.
No more explanations to give.
No more attempts to make things better.
There was only silence.
And grief.
An overwhelming amount of grief.
I have cried so much over the last two days that my throat hurts. My head aches. My body feels exhausted from carrying emotions that seem too large to fit inside of me.
The grief comes in waves.
Sometimes it arrives as sadness.
Sometimes it arrives as disbelief.
Sometimes it arrives as the realization that as things stand today, I may never see my family again.
I may never speak to them again.
I may never know what becomes of them.
I may never be with my parents in their final moments of life.
And that realization cuts deeply every single time it enters my mind.
People talk about grief as though it comes in stages, but this feels different.
This feels like death by a million cuts.
Slow cuts.
Invisible cuts.
Cuts that appear out of nowhere.
One moment I am fine, and the next I am overwhelmed by sorrow so heavy that I can barely hold it.
The grief finds me in ordinary moments.
It finds me when the house is quiet.
It finds me when my thoughts wander.
It finds me when I remember that there is no future version of this story where everything works itself out.
What hurts the most is that if there had been another choice, I would have taken it.
If there had been another path, I would have walked it.
If there had been another way to preserve my peace without losing my family, I would have chosen that instead.
But there wasn’t.
That is what makes this so painful.
Not that I made the wrong decision.
But that the right decision hurts this much.
I know why I went no contact.
I know why it became necessary.
I know why I could not continue.
Yet none of that knowledge softens the grief.
None of it stops the tears.
None of it makes the loss easier to bear.
The truth is that I love my family.
I always will.
And perhaps that is why this hurts so deeply.
Day two was not about freedom.
Day two was not about empowerment.
Day two was not about moving on.
Day two was about carrying the full weight of my decision and realizing that the weight of my decision is grief.
Nothing more.
Nothing less.
Just grief.
And for now, that grief is enough to carry.
My Voice Unchained 