A Constant Background of Wrongness

It has been well over a year.

I can say that sentence out loud now. I can write it. I can count the months on a calendar and acknowledge that seasons have turned, birthdays and holidays have come and gone.

And still, it feels completely absurd that Jess is gone.

Not poetic. Not metaphorical. Absurd.

There are mornings when I wake up, and for a split second, everything is normal. The light comes in the same way. The coffee smells the same. My mind begins assembling the day as if she will walk through it.

Then reality lands again.

It is not dramatic most days. It is not even loud. It is just… wrong.

I still expect to tell her things. There is still a reflex in my body that wants to walk down the hall to see her sprawled on her bed with her cat in her arms.

AND this is the part no one prepares you for: The world keeps functioning!

How can a universe that once held her keep operating without adjusting its tilt?

It feels like a clerical error. Like someone misplaced a file and forgot to restore it.

There are moments I think, surely this is temporary. Surely this is a misunderstanding. Surely I will round a corner, and there she will be, slightly exasperated with me for overreacting.

It is not denial in the dramatic sense. I know what happened. I know the facts. I can recount them if required.

But knowing is different from believing.

Believing would mean my nervous system stops expecting her footsteps. Believing would mean my heart stops making space on the couch.

She was not background. She is not replaceable. She is not someone who quietly slipped through unnoticed. She lifted rooms with silliness and warmth. She helped people feel like they belonged simply by noticing them.

A life like that does not feel compatible with disappearance. Sometimes people assume that after a year, grief softens into something tidy. That the sharp edges wear down. That acceptance arrives like a stamp of completion.

It has not felt like that for me.

What has happened instead is this strange duality. I can function. I can laugh. I can build projects. I can help other people.

And simultaneously, I can look at her photo and think, This cannot be real. This cannot be the ending.

Both are true.

Grief, at this stage, is less of a tidal wave and more of a constant background of wrongness.

Over a year later, the impossible has become permanent. And yet, it still feels impossible.

Time has moved. I have moved.

But some part of me still stands in the hallway expecting her to answer.