My fiancé and partner of 10 years, Nate, died by suicide on March 8th, 2022, and my life was ripped away from me and completely destroyed.

Suicide is a tragic and heartbreaking out of order death.

It leaves you with a uniquely complicated grief journey. You ask yourself—why? Why did this have to happen? Why him? Why me?

Life as you knew it is gone in the blink of an eye. Everything about your life is forever changed.

Even as I was in a constant state of shock and dissociation, I was immediately forced to deal with reality of the “What do I do?” That’s one of the many unfortunate realities of death—there is rapidly so much to do. You have little time to understand that your person is gone, and you must handle the logistics.

Before I could even take a breath, I had to focus on settling his estate, multiple services at the police department he worked for, traveling to his home state of Rhode Island, service at temple, writing and giving his eulogy, sitting Shiva, and ultimately traveling to his family plot in New Jersey to bury him.

I sold our house, donated so many of our belongings, moved into an apartment, then decided to move back home to Florida from New Mexico, and sold every last thing I owned—every piece of my life built with Nate with nothing other than a suitcase and a box. I rented a room where I couldn’t even live with our precious dog Maggie, so she lived with my father.

Finally, in January, I moved to downtown Orlando and got an awesome apartment for Maggie and I. I got a new car. I treated myself to some cosmetic work.

Nothing has filled the void in my heart and soul. I cry, every single day of my life now. The good thing is, what used to be debilitating crying spells has now turned into simply allowing and accepting that the crying, the grieving, is just part of my life now. I carefully open up the box, let everything out, then I gently close the box and am back to baseline.

I am forever a changed person. I don’t know what to make of that yet. I’m not the person I was a year ago before he died. I will never be that person again, and now I must completely rediscover and reinvent myself. It’s terrifying. I look at my future and see nothing but unknowns. I left my career in mental health and started working on getting my real estate license again. However, through battling the grief and depression, this is taking me more time than planned; then it will take me who knows how long to build business. I need a job soon, any job, and am so lost.

That being said, for the first time in over a year, I am hopeful. I’m not sure what I’m particularly hopeful about, but I’m just hopeful that everything will work out. What I do know is, I am strong. I am brave. I am resilient. I have survived what most people couldn’t survive and can’t even fathom.

I wish this wasn’t my life, I miss my old life—with Nate. I miss him. I miss our home. I miss the life we spent years building together.

However, this is my life. I can and do accept it now. I used to have so many goals in life. Big dreams and ambitions. My only goal moving forward is to find true peace and happiness, whatever that means, whatever that is, wherever that is.

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