Still Here

Dear Lorenzo,

It's 9:21 p.m., Saturday night, and Amira's upstairs with Grandma, Aisha, and my cell phone while I sit downstairs, alone in my room, talking to you while watching...

Nothing.

I am watching nothing.

No Goldbergs, no Brookyn 99, no repeats of Parks and Recreation or The Leftovers.

I'm home alone, talking to you with the TV turned off.

At last.

And the silence that I've been so afraid of for the past three years, the emptiness that I've attempted to escape via thirty minute sitcoms, red wine, and potato chips...isn't so scary after all.

It cannot pull me under.

It cannot take from me more than I've already lost.

Allowing myself to sit in the silence, in the emptiness, in the loneliness, without the distraction of background noise has not broken me after all.

I'm okay.

And I'm still here, just figuring out what comes next.