I don't know what I'm doing.
One day at a time, you say.
You'll take this one day at a time.
It's what you've told countless other people to do. There's an entire class on it in medical school -bedside manner and breaking news and prescribing home remedies for grief that don't work but it's better than doing nothing. So you make a half-hearted attempt at taking your own advice and you discover just how wrong you were.
You find out firsthand that doctors truly are the worst patients. Your therapist expects you to talk. Damn shrinks always want you to talk. She wants you to tell her everything you never said to him. Perhaps she thinks it will help or maybe she just wants to satisfy her own curiosity. But she doesn't understand and you don't care to explain that you never had to tell him anything because he already knew. He never said so, but you know it's true. He had to have known. People don't leave notes for just anyone.
She leans forward and starts feeding you bullshit about depression and post traumatic stress. Wants to prescribe you pills as if that will fix this, as if a daily dose of sertraline will bring him back. You tell her it's useless because that's like putting a bandaid on a broken bone and can't she see you've nearly shattered? So you walk out promising to not come back again.
You go back to Baker Street and you sit for hours and you wonder what he'd do if he were here. His fingers would twitch and he'd beg for a cigarette but you'd refuse. Or maybe he'd have target practice with the wall because what's a few more holes, anyway? Or maybe he would sulk like the bloody child he was and complain dramatically of boredom. And you'll be the first to say that life with Sherlock Holmes was certainly never boring.
But life without him?
Life without him is empty.
You look about the flat and it is full of his shit, his experiments, his books, and yet, to you it's empty because everything that made it home is gone. But if you try hard enough you still see him lying on the couch, hands folded, refusing to get up. You see him thinking too hard, and not saying enough. You see him eyes closed with his violin pressed against his shoulder exactly where you belonged, allowing himself a few moments to just feel.
There is a sickening crack of bone as the skull from the mantelpiece makes contact with the wall and you see him lying on the pavement, feel a stranger's hands pulling at your shoulders as they take him away from you. You see his blood pooling at your feet and you know now that this void inside of you is not ordinary grief, a simple case of missing him.
You are sick. You are homesick for him, for everything he was to you. And there is no cure for that, so you tell Mrs. Hudson that you can't go back to the flat. It hurts too much and she's graceful and understanding as always.
And then you wait for her to walk away before you beg. You've never been one to believe in miracles but you beg him for just one more because God knows you are due for one. And for Sherlock Holmes to be anything he's not is the greatest miracle of all, but you ask him anyway to somehow not be dead.
And until he's not you'll nurse your homesickness on your own. You'll learn how to live with it. And you'll figure out a way to live this life without him.
One day at a time.