Addiction grief is losing someone in layers. People treat this kind of grief like it needs a moral at the end and I hate that. The phone used to make my stomach drop before it ever brought actual news. I am grieving the years that got fed to something hungry and stupid and bigger than us. The shame around this kind of loss lands on the living like ash. Some grief arrives with paperwork and some arrives with silence from people who do not know what to say.
For the brother I knew before it all