I’ll tell you what it’s like.

The first moments drag like hours, as they’re dragged into the earth. Whether the cruelty of the Fates or the gears of your own perception grinding to a halt, the only thing you’re certain of is that the seconds no longer peel away. Each is another needle pricking your skin, reminding you of your mortality, reminding you of theirs.

The laments surrounding you fall deaf before long. Sure, you can recognize the pain etched onto others’ faces, but can you register it? Can you really remember what it feels like to feel?

No, you shut yourself down the moment you walked through those gates, when you realized that was the last time you would ever see them. You wanted to feel numb, to be immune from the pangs and the sorrows. If you are feeling anything, it’s most likely a distant echo, the silhouette of a sob. You try to hold onto the memories, replay them perfectly in the cinema of your mind. But you start to lose details, features become fuzzy, dialogue becomes muffled. You hold onto the memory of memories, now. Something which you know was present once but cannot be replaced.

You’ll hear the same words again and again and again, repeating like an epitaphic drum. “I’m so sorry.” “My condolences.” “How are you holding up?” And you may have responses already memorized, to be played automatically, without recognition of what’s truly being said. “Thank you.” “It means a lot.” “Doing the best I can.” But that last one is always a lie, isn’t it? Even if you really are, it just isn’t enough. Best is no longer an option; only passable.

The days will blur together, in fogs of consoling hugs, mists of well-wishes, hazes of melancholic facades. How long will it last? Who’s to say? Know that time will pitch forward and compress backward at once. The days soon become months, and years may fly like hours.

There’s no way to say for certain, but then, one day, it happens.

You wake up one morning, and the absence that was gnawing away at you is no longer void. Your soul has embraced it, accepted the emptiness, compensated for the missing piece of itself. The grey matter scarifies like flesh. The heart beats onward, unerring. And you move on.

That doesn’t mean it ever goes away. No, it never fully disappears, but it becomes easier to deal with. The burden eases over time, ever-present but in the background, a shadow on a photograph, a flicker of reminiscence. Like Sisyphus, your boulder becomes your reason for existence.

The past will never remain buried, not forever. Some days, uncovering it will open old wounds once more. But you learn to cope, to press onward in the face of nihility. You attempt to make sense of the chaos ringing clarion inside your skull. And maybe that’s when you’ll reach the realization that’s been plaguing you for all this time, the rot eating away that you’ve ignored for too long: maybe trying to find meaning is meaningless.