How Can We Not Talk About Family When Family's All That We Got

Midnight panic attacks are never fun. They don't come often and they probably can't properly be described as a panic attack but for a moment I'm taken aback and I lose my breath and tears stream down my face. Just for a moment though, when I realize you're not coming back. They come when I get excited to come home and see you or when I'm at our old familiar places or when I get lost on your Facebook and I can hear your voice in your status updates and forget that it's not 2013 and you're not going to respond to my comment. I get as far back as three or four years and I see something funny so instinct still tells me to text you and make fun of you. They come when I realize I haven't seen your face in almost six months... When I realize I haven't seen you happy and well in almost a year, and when I realize that six months is a number that's going to keep growing for six years and sixteen years and sixty years and forever. No one tells you about the midnight panic attacks. They tell you that life will be harder to live and they tell you how unfair it is and they tell you how you'll never stop missing them but no one tells you what's real. And what's real is that life day to day is easy. We live and we smile and laugh and dance and work and we play but then midnight rolls around and you have something funny to say or you need to talk to the one person who just gets you and you almost say it until you realize... Oh yeah, she's gone.