How are you?

I am touched and grateful for the question but for the first time in 32 years, I don’t know how to answer it. More accurately, I don’t know if I should.

What would these people who ask me how I am do if I decide to tell them EXACTLY how I am? These, I have no doubt, good meaning and genuinely concerned people who probably ask only because they don’t know what else to say (Because really, what else is there to say?) Will they have the time, the energy to listen to me talk and ramble on and on and on as I try desperately to understand why what happened happened? Will they have the patience to just sit, awkward and still, when I lose myself in thoughts that are often too painful to share? Are they equipped to help me unload this heavy, heavy, unbelievably heavy feeling I've been carrying in my chest since that awful thursday?

So I say I’m okay - even if I’m not - because I believe I will be someday - because I'm tough like papa that way. Except I’m sure that okay will never mean the same again. Not without him.