This year for me has been particularly bad, and not just from a political standpoint (though that has been awful too). I lost three friends in the space of a year and my husband died on January 5. That, I think, constitutes calling 2025 a rotten year, and saying that next year can’t possibly be worse. Basically, goodbye 2025, and don’t let the door hit you in the ass as you leave.

Grief is a peculiar thing. It’s heavy, wearying and draining. I find myself, now as the holidays are here, on the cusp of crying every time I turn around. Everything in my house reminds me that my husband is gone, makes me feel stretched and aching, and as Bilbo Baggins famously said, “like butter spread too thin on bread.” I’m constantly tired, and not from not sleeping either (though that’s difficult as well). I let things go, don’t clean as well as I’d like, and generally feel all the time as if I’m wading through a bog of cold molasses.

Then, of course, there’s the political landscape, which only adds to my general malaise. This country is going to hell in a handbasket, and no matter how much we protest and fight, it’s still going to take years to repair what Rump and his thugs have managed to destroy in the space of a year. I’m lucky, I live in a deeply blue state in a deeply blue area which means a lot. But we aren’t immune to idiocy, nobody is. Though I hold out hope that many of the MAGAts have learned (too late) that their god-emperor has no clothes.

As a Buddhist, I’m constantly reminded to let it go, not to hold on too tightly to anything because such things only drag you down. And they do, but grief is insidious and resists the idea of letting go. It actively fights you and claws its way back to your consciousness only to jump up and down screaming, “look at me! Feel me!” It digs a hole in your heart, a gaping wound that only it fills.

In my bereavement group, the leader told us at the beginning, “don’t look to be fixed, here. You are not broken.” But oh, I feel broken. My sister-in-law says we carry a piece of the soul of the ones we love, forever, as they carry a piece of ours. That may be, but it’s insufficient.

I just want my husband back.