On the day I found the body of my best friend, co-worker, the man I loved with my whole being, I wasn’t online much.

Prior to the discovery, it was a fairly normal day. Then at lunch, I found him, and everything changed.

After dealing with the police, medical examiner, a tow truck for my car, detectives, and the emergency personnel, I then met up with close friends of mine & his to let them know what had happened.

During that meeting, I got a call from his sister, who the authorities had finally told. She didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to say. We said we’d talk more later, and then she got a call from her mom. She told me before that call came in that when she’d told her dad, he’d made a sound she’d never heard before. It was heartbreaking.

I went back to mourning and absorbing the new reality with friends. We were largely silent. I answered questions as people asked them. Some stayed for a long time. Some left quickly. Honestly, I don’t remember a lot of specifics. I remember being worried about people. Some more than others. I remember being surprised at the reactions that people had. That some reacted far more strongly than I expected. And others almost didn’t react at all. Not that everyone wasn’t shaken. Shocked. Changed. Some just weren’t outwardly effected, and some of the people who weren’t kind of surprised me.

That night, I felt like I needed to say something… something to the online community. Something to the world at large. But I knew that there was a large number of people who needed to be informed personally that didn’t know yet. So I couldn’t be specific. I couldn’t let on. Because that’s no way to find out. So in my need to say something, I went to a forum in which I knew that the people who would read my post either already knew, or didn’t know him at all, and so wouldn’t be affected, aside from concern for me. I posted, simply, “My best friend is dead.”

I couldn’t handle posting more. Not at that point. Even just that destroyed me.

And I knew I’d be acting weird, so I went to Facebook, where there were people who I knew hadn’t heard yet. And I made a vaguebook post. Not to elicit sympathy, but to explain absence, or weird reactions, or whatever. Because I wasn’t going to say anything specific until I knew that the majority of people had been informed. Personally. By friends.

I don’t know how late I was up that night. I know that some good friends came to my house to keep me company until I was ready to be alone, for which I’m very grateful. I had more offers for a place to stay than I can even remember, much less count, but I needed my cat. I needed my bed. I needed alone space to cry.

Because, much as my friends understood, much as they would have been there for me, HE was the only person I’d been comfortable really feeling, really crying, really emoting to. For a very long time. So I needed to be alone, otherwise, I would have suppressed it. And I knew that would be bad.

I remember that I actually fell asleep fairly easily, after crying. I was surprised. I didn’t wake a lot that night, but I didn’t sleep that long.

I also didn’t eat. I’d had toast for breakfast, and had brought in a tuna sandwich for lunch, but left to check on him before I’d eaten it. Turns out that was probably good, as I would likely have thrown it up. I drank a lot of water, because I felt terribly parched. I guess crying does that.

Day 1. Tuesday, February 18th, 2014. The day that changed me forever. The day – my best friend, co-worker, sometimes lover – my Person left the world. Tuesdays will never be the same. I will probably never like Valentine’s Day again. Day 1. The worst day of my life.

Written 3/13/14

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