Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one. - Albert Einstein

My last two days have been filled with mourning.  My poignant loss is illusionary though.  I don't think that I ever actually had the thing that I am mourning.  It doesn't make coping with its absence any easier, I am afraid.  Mourning the loss of something I never really had.  It seems foolish.  I would say, "Crazy!" but not recognizing that it is gone and never existed would be crazier still. 

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
- Albert Einstein

This is what I desperately try to avoid.

Still, I am having trouble integrating my new reality.  This thing, I thought I had but never was, was at the foundation of my rediscovering myself.  To have it vanish means restructuring that essence anew.  Melodramatic and hyperbolic, to be sure, but nevertheless, my world is askew.  It will take some effort to right it again.