Page 39 of Iron and Ivory

The past few months have been devastatingly, crushingly disruptive. Last spring, the four of us sat at this table together twice a day. It was a ritual instilled in us as children. No one skipped breakfast or dinner. Not even Wyatt when he was going through his “cocaine phase”.

Now, it's like that life never existed. Cash only came in here and sat down out of habit. But he's soon gonna realize—maybe next week, maybe next month—that he doesn't have to anymore. And then he won't.

At least when Mercy and Legion were here, dinner was an actual event.

Now, it's just Cash and me being performative.

And it's not gonna last.

It's defeating, actually, to realize that the mother you both love and hate was the only thing holding this family together. That her high expectations and strict protocols actually shaped something special.

Shaped the whole meaning of the word “family” from the Ashby perspective.

The spirit of all that she was, all that she poured into us, lingers still.

But it's fading like an expensive perfume dotted on your wrist this morning. Fleeting and evanescent.

And soon, it'll be gone and it won't ever be back.

I sit with this for a few minutes. Pushing eggs around my plate, sipping coffee sweetened with vanilla creamer, imagining life after Eleanor's soul finally departs for better places.

And I realize… I can't live with it.

I spend the day wandering around the house, around the barn, around anything I can, feeling quite lost. Not able to admit that I am in mourning for the Little Ashby Princess.

Eleanor's death was some time ago now and the thrice daily uploads of me stopped well before that, so it's not like I've been walking through my day with the weight of a camera on me.

But it's always been there, in spirit at least.

And now… it definitively is not.

There's an emptiness.

And even as I think these words, I get it. I'm bein' dramatic in the way that only a woman raised on a curated myth of herself can be.

People have actual problems. Starvation. Violence. Illness without medicine and children without shoes.

And I'm sittin' here throwin' yet another elaborate pity party over things that aren't even real.

It's one thing to miss your brother. It's quite another to miss your… celebrity.

That word. Celebrity.

There's something wrong with me. Something deep, and structural, and actual.

But in the same breath, there's nothin' wrong with me either. I'm not any different than anyone else when you strip all the decorations away.

Endings are hard because beginnings are empty.

And sadness fill that hole like water in a bucket because sadness is free and everywhere. It's the first thing available when things disappear.

That's what longing is.

A desperate attempt to hang on by your fingernails to the only thing you understood to the roots because letting go is falling, and falling is risky.

Unknown risky.

If you're hanging by a thread, at least you understand the risk.