A ghost in the fog

It’s taken me a while to realize this, but truthfully I’m afraid of myself and the world around me. For the past week I’ve been more and more aware of a fog I’ve been living under since losing him. Maybe it’s wrong to call it a fog, as if it's temporary and will roll past. Maybe the fog is my life now; it’s different when the changes around you are the forever kind. It’s new to learn that love cannot save. It’s new to know that time runs out and all the memories you have are all you’re going to have. But I’m still here. And so are my eyes. And so is my camera. We have to connect again, my camera and I. I have to face my camera. I’ve waited so long and I’m not solidly sure I even want to. And yet, I know I need to put it back in my life, back in my hands.

I don’t have to wonder why I’m afraid, why I haven’t gone beyond the necessary movements the past several months. Life without him is new, and not what I want. As much as I think I’ve plowed through my heart and my mind, there is still so much of me that cannot fully accept it. It is the part that does not know where I belong, that lives between not wanting to be alone and not wanting to see a soul. The part of me that for a flash of time wants to share something with him, and in an equally quick flash, remembers that I cannot. It is the part of me that feels that if I take new photos, photos beyond digital snapshots, then it will be official. I really am here and he really is not – that is the same reality that is shaped for me by the camera that stands between my eyes and what I see. I see it, I feel it. But I am not part of the picture, and I cannot reach it.