A Night That Felt Like You Were Near

A Night That Felt Like You Were Near Last night felt different. Not in a loud or dramatic way, but in the quiet, unsettling way that makes you pause and wonder what is real, what is memory, and what is longing. Sana’s picture frame fell to the floor. There was no clear reason I could find. No sound of impact, no disturbance that made sense of it. Just the frame on the ground. In moments like that, the mind reaches for meaning—not because it is irrational, but because love does not easily accept absence. Later that night, I woke up in the middle of sleep and went to get a drink of water. I felt disoriented. My body felt unsteady, my balance uncertain. I fell. I don’t fully know how it happened. But I also know I had not slept properly, had not eaten well, and my body has been carrying more medication effects and exhaustion than I’ve fully acknowledged. In that fragile state between waking and sleep, the world can feel unstable in ways that are not spiritual, but physical. And yet, in both moments—the falling frame, the fall in the night—there was a feeling I cannot fully explain. A sense of presence. Not something I can prove or define, but something that sits quietly in the emotional space she once filled. I was able to get up. I made it back to bed. I slept. And I think about that too—the fact that even in disorientation, even in fear, I was able to return to rest. To continue. To recover. It reminds me of another moment recently, when I crossed the road and felt something I can only describe as being held by something larger than myself. As if, even in chaos, there was a thread pulling me back toward safety. I don’t know how to explain these things in logical terms anymore. Grief reshapes how time feels, how memory feels, how coincidence feels. Maybe what I am experiencing is exhaustion. Maybe it is the body under strain—lack of sleep, medication effects, and emotional weight all blending together. But what I do know is this: Sana is part of my inner world now in a way that does not leave me. Not as a physical presence, but as a relationship that continues in memory, in instinct, in love that does not end just because life changes form. And maybe that is where she exists now—not in signs I can prove, but in the way I continue to hold on, continue to get up after falling, continue to find my way back to safety even in the darkest parts of the night. Not as something that happened to me from outside. But as something that still lives within me.