The first months after our partners passed away, we saw all the survival mechanisms we didn’t know we had, activated. One of us had to go to rehab and then shut herself in her parents’ house, refusing to go out. Another one started living two different lives: upbeat on the outside and suicidal on the inside. What followed was a deep black hole of depression. Years of suppressing our mental health struggles, keeping it up and living with unresolved grief came back like an avalanche of pain we could not handle. We wanted to shout on top of our lungs, hoping our hearts would shutter in a direct, physical way.

This was when we turned to the faceless online world, which is often easier to confess to and more willing to listen than your friends. And this is when we met each other – two young women united by unbearable pain, loneliness and isolation. We could relate to each other’s grief like no other.

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