Mona blow-dries my hair but it ends up looking the same as it did two hours ago by the time we get to the bar. There’s a flurry of familiar faces coming in, and we don’t know a single name. Our friend, the hostess, makes sure everyone introduces themselves, though I’m doing the same footwork on my side of the room. Coworker, meet childhood friend. Coworker, meet college friend. College friend, meet roommate. The beauty of these introductions is that they exist through me and therefore cannot outlast the simple exchange in this Irish bar. Except there is Liam, who charms Danielle and forgets that this is my second friend he’s asked out on a date. He forgets that he never asks me how I’m doing anymore because he’s learning all the details of someone else’s life. He lifts his beer to tap against my plastic cup of water and in a sing-songy voice I joke that I’ve been discarded. I don’t stop there. Under the elusion of a laugh I use words like slimy and schemey to get a reaction out of him. This is a night out, and no one is really trying to get into the meat of things. Margot joins us and asks me how I’m liking Brooklyn, but to get to that we’d have to start in Manhattan. So I walk her through each lease and by the time I’m done she says her friends want to go to a different bar now. On the bus home I ask myself why I still go to parties when my father is dead, why I let people make fun of me for wanting to go to sleep early. With every morsel of pressure they offer me I wish to exchange it for the discomfort of my grief, dropping bombs in the bar. I’d like to tell them their small talk is botched, and is that a reflection of what it’s like to be 25 years old?

Sometimes I miss the early grief days in my childhood home. When no one asked me questions of when I was going back to work or what I wanted to do over the weekend. It was quiet and peaceful, and very very sad. But that time was mine, and I merely had to exist to receive white flowers and ‘thinking of you’ texts. I could leave my phone at home and sit by my dad’s grave with my mom and brother for hours. I could play the piano in the quiet of the living room. Family would come to pay their respect and it felt right to talk and talk and talk about death.

Now I’m expected to go to parties and make small talk and be on the dating scene, when in these moments I want to scream “my dad just died.” Because those words need air or else they are forgotten. In the months that followed and I returned to New York City, my grief started to rub up against the friend that I used to be. The friend that listens, gives, and resolves whatever feelings she has within herself. That friend was gone, and for the first time in my life I realized I didn’t want to think about anyone but myself. I was tired of all the years thinking about someone’s reaction before ever saying anything, or staying up all night listening to someone else’s problems when they weren’t going to listen to me anyway. It is a hard practice, a daily practice, and a practice I desperately needed to begin to understand what it means to prioritize myself. I am still learning how to say no to others and set boundaries that focus on my own needs. I catch myself often changing the words I use around my pain depending on how much the person in front of me can handle. It hurts to hold back tears but it hurts even more when they fall into hands that can’t hold them.

Tomorrow I will muster the strength not to lift my suitcase into the overhead of an Amtrak train, but to ask someone else to do so. Please see it in my face that I am tired and I need you, perfect stranger. The weekend will call for birthday festivities over sushi, in wine bars, on a makeshift bed on a friend’s couch. I’ve been told to bring a nice dress, but I’ve never been taught how to make my face sparkle. It has not even been five months, and the weight of each one of them has almost crushed me. The heaviness of my eyes begin to mirror the subtle tumblings of walls within me, the ones that were holding up a hidden well of tears. Even before the tears there were tearings. Before the breaking there were bearings. It’s mid-August and the letting go gets ugly. I keep my mouth shut more, I fall into bed and hug my knees close. I have a feeling this sort of unraveling will leave me with more of a mess than I started with, like yarn that tangles and knots from one loose thread. If only we could all turn our insides out, it would be a softer place to land than smiles with teeth and bony arms.