When my mother passed away in 2018, I felt like my world had been folded in half. I stopped painting, stopped writing, stopped everything that reminded me of the life we had before….

When my mother passed away in 2018, I felt like my world had been folded in half.
I stopped painting, stopped writing, stopped everything that reminded me of the life we had before.

For months, my best friend Nora came over almost every evening. She never said much, just sat quietly beside me on the couch while I stared at the same movie on repeat. Then one night, she told me,
“You have to start living again. Your mom wouldn’t want you stuck in this house forever.”

She was right, of course. So I started small — opening the curtains, letting the sunlight in, walking outside. It felt strange, like learning to breathe again.

A few months later, Nora got a job in another city — a quiet town three hours away. She promised we’d still talk every day. We did, for a while. But little by little, her messages got shorter, her calls less frequent.
Then one day, they stopped altogether.

I told myself she was just busy. But something about the sudden silence felt wrong.

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