Lately I can feel myself entering a new phase of the grieving process. I wouldn’t quite call it acceptance, because I still spend a good part of each day trying to wrap my head around Steve being gone and not quite believing it really happened, but it is more of an acknowledgment that somehow, life has to continue.

In a way, I’m almost going backward to go forward. I first noticed it when my oldest and dearest friend, D, finally made it into town for an in-person visit a few months after Steve’s death. We spent an evening together that ended up lasting until the wee small hours of the morning, much like we used to do a few decades ago when neither of us had full-time jobs or family commitments and a “quick visit” could turn into a few glasses of wine and 3 a.m. conversation. We easily fell back into our old routine, sitting on the floor, conversation wandering in one direction and then another.

Over the course of our friendship, we’ve lost both of her parents, my father, other close family members, and several mutual friends. Grief was no stranger to our friendship, and we’d taken turns comforting each other many times over the years. Even though it was an emotional evening, and our customary beverages took a small toll, I woke up the next morning feeling more grounded than I had in months.

As I thought about our conversation over the next few days, and had a few more follow-up conversations via FaceTime, I realized that she had inadvertently reminded me that I was a functional human being before Steve.

Don’t get me wrong, D adored Steve. Having witnessed many of my tragic relationships over the years, she frequently reminded me how she just “knew” when she met Steve that he was my “one.” Over the years, they formed their own bond, and the three of us had many memorable times together, including one particular pumpkin carving session where their artistic natures got quite competitive with each other.

D reminded me of the time just before I’d reconnected with Steve. Having had my fill of uninspiring relationships, I’d decided it was better to be single and alone than with someone who made me anything less than 100% happy. Another good friend and I headed to New Orleans for Halloween. It wasn’t quite Mardi Gras, but it was a terrifically fun city at that time of year, too. D and I took several trips to Boston, me to reconnect with my college years, and her to meet up with some old friends who were living in the city. We had some wild and crazy adventures, one of which ended with us skateboarding down a back alley way with D’s friends in the middle of the night.

When I wasn’t spending quality time with my friends, I spent plenty of solitary evenings trying new restaurants or going to the movies by myself. Being alone then never bothered me. If I thought about it at all, it was mostly happiness that I didn’t have to share my bucket of popcorn and Junior Mints with anyone else.

Then, I connected with Steve, and suddenly, there were six additional grubby little hands fighting over the popcorn and complaining about sharing a straw (pre-COVID, obviously) and that didn’t seem like such an awful thing anymore. Suddenly, alone time became a unicorn, a fantasy, something that just didn’t exist in the real world. I had a better chance of finding and catching a leprechaun than I did of getting three minutes of alone time to go to the bathroom.

Now, it’s yet a different kind of alone time. Being alone after you’ve had someone that shared your brain waves to a point that you knew you were thinking the same things without saying a word and knowing that you’ll never have that kind of togetherness with someone again is an awful alone to be. Of course, having the kids means I’m never really alone-alone. I swear even as teenagers they have an uncanny knack for needing me the minute I close the bathroom door, but it’s obviously not the same kind of together that I had with Steve. Even when Steve and I were together, we were most likely going in separate directions, just like that last day, when I went to my swim meet and he headed out to the woods. It was the knowing that the other person would be there waiting for you, at the end of the day, that made it not lonely.

I guess in a way, Steve is still there waiting for me, somewhere. I don’t know what I believe about any kind of afterlife anymore. Going through this and living without Steve seems pretty much as close to a Hell as I can imagine right now, so I don’t like to speculate about what happens after death.

I’m at the point, though, where I realize I have to find a way to move forward, alone. Part of it may be reaching back and remembering who I was before Steve, part of it may be leaning on the kids a little more than I might have in the past, and part of it is still something I have to figure out. I hate that I have to start trying to figure this out again.

At this age, I didn’t expect to have to harken back to my middle school days where I kept a check list to help myself turn into the person I wanted to be as I navigated a new school and new chapter of my life. Most of that, however, came from not liking the person I was before and wanting to be different. Now, I loved the person that I was and never would have willingly given that up. My goal isn’t to become a better person or a different one, it’s just to survive.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.