Dear K, Part 3 of Many

Dear K, 

Outside, I hear the rain. I used to love the way it washed the world, and how all the colors bled together in light bursts until everything was beautiful. But now it feels like a giant version of sadness, like all the world is crying for you. And I'm crying for you, tonight. My heart holds heaviness, a leaking bag of sand limping across the landscape of relics of us; all these ways I miss you:

I miss the way you turned your eyes on me with a hint of a smile, the way your lips curled up just before you'd do or say something to make me laugh. The way you'd do anything to get me to laugh when I was down. I'm missing how if you were here now, first you would hold me. You'd let it be one of those long, lingering hugs, tight and safe. I'd bury my face in your neck and breath you, feel the softness of your skin again my face. And then you'd rub my sides a bit, and look directly into my eyes, searching to see if whatever was wrong had been set right. 

And that was the most magnificent thing about you, to be so in tune that my body language was louder than my words and I seldom had to tell you when something was wrong. Where are you tonight, when things are so very wrong? Where have you gone, Lovey, now that I feel so empty and alone? There is guilt in this heavy heart of mine, wanting to heal but feeling badly for wanting it so. My mind wants my heart to fall out of love with you so we can find happiness, but my heart is yours and yours alone. And everyone says words that mean so little like time and heartache and grief and these things that mean an everything that feels like nothing at all. I'm sick of the blandness of life. I'm sick of the way things look the color of honey: blurry with the kind of slow stickiness that blends together entire days in a mire of forgetfulness.

I am bad at life now, Lovey. My drive is less than half what it was when I was pushing towards the best life with you. My desire is only to get by, only to do something just past the basics to keep from suffering too much. They say these things will pass, that there is no time table for any of this and I hear it and that is fine. But this is just a long stream of conscious when all I want is the comfort of your arms. My head is pounding, threatening a monumental migraine. My skin has gone to shit, lost weight, gained it, lost it, gained it. All of this is shit. Just a big steaming pile. 

How could this have been what was for us, Lovey? How could it? I hope this life passes easy and quick so that in the next blink of an eye I can ask you these questions and you can answer and we can try again. Oh, to be able to try again. I have to believe that is possible. I have to. 

With difficulty and love, 

Leppy

Smiling Through It/Girlfriends & Graduations

It's been a while since I've written, friends. A lot has happened in a short time. I signed a lease and decided to stay in the city (well, in the opposite order). I moved in, and have a roommate for the first time in almost 10 years (heeeey D. Thanks). I made a conscious decision to live with someone...I still don't do so well with being alone. It's like being scared of the dark, when the dark is what's inside your own head. My parents brought back a lot of my furniture, my former life (no cats though; D is a allergic and they aren't allowed here...plus finding reasonable, good housing is ridiculously difficult). Work has been a whirlwind and intense and crazy. And, I didn't have internet until a few days ago at the new apartment, which we lovingly call the Zombie Fortress. Or Zombie Safehouse, depending on your perspective (hashtag a sense of humor). So, here we are, caught up, more or less.

At the time, this would have been a now, but instead it's a then, because time slipped by before I could tell you about it. So let's go back a bit, yeah?

May 21, 2014. The day that K received his Juris Doctor. A Wednesday, smack in the middle of the week and life and things. Early morning, I am in a car down to New Jersey. Man, I hate going to Jersey now. My stomach is riding high up in my ribcage and my eyes are threatening to spill over before we even so much as make it onto the west side highway. On the way over the GWB I'm thinking about how long it takes to fall, and the article I read in the NYT about how the Golden Gate Bridge has the highest number of suicides of any bridge in the country (what is it about serenity and the expanse that comes with the west coast that makes people so committed, I wonder). I can't imagine jumping, having enough time to think and change your mind and it's too late. Or maybe it's all peace and ease and relief? It's not my style, but for some reason it's my thought now. And then just as quickly, we're in Jers, we're in the town I spent the last 6 years in, we're pulling up to K's parent's house. And then it's his little brother at the door for me, and I'm in the living room, perched on the same wood chair I pulled into the kitchen the day of the accident, the same chair where I hugged my knees to my chest and realized that K and I didn't get to grow old together anymore. The day my life changed.

I'm sitting across from K's foldout couch bed, watching his dad tie on K's favorite purple tie ("I'm going to borrow this, okay boy?" K's brother, tightly: "come on Dad..."), me with my eyes wet as I glaze over the poster board of condolences from the kids at the law school, and the funeral program, a framed picture of K, a collage of our pictures that I made him one year for his birthday...and his ashes. His ashes. Again. His ashes. The body of my beloved all crumbled up into something I can't hold or kiss, something that can't laugh or talk, some-thing. Not someone. Not my someone. The beginning and end inscribed on the side, a whole person paired down to dust and dates. Fuck. I'm crying and apologizing to his little brother. I hadn't meant to cry so soon. I'm trying to stop the tears before his mom comes out from getting dressed. I can't, but I'm trying. And so I'm trying to smile through them, smile through all my pain. It's all I've done since January. It's all I know how to do anymore.

We're on our way now, K's family and me, and his little brother's girlfriend. I'm happy to see her, but she seems less so to see me. I know what it's like to be The Girlfriend (more on that in a minute), to be there but not really there, just a fixture for moral support and companionship. I don't know if she feels that way, but I have in the past. More than once in my life. At the graduation, we are escorted to the front. When the processional starts, I'm in tears again. They are pouring uncontrollably down my face, and I don't care if I'm streaking my makeup. K should be here, damnit. He fucking earned this. 2.5 years of hard fucking work, and more late nights than undergrad. No one knows better than me, sitting up with him, reading his case law out loud when he got too tired, quizzing him until I understood the difference between first and second degree murder and manslaughter, or what all the requisites are for a contract (consideration, it's all about consideration). All the hours spent pouring over jobs and fine tuning resumes and cover letters, and learning what kind of law firms K would like. So many hours it was days, weeks. He should be here, damnit, with his class.

Every speaker mentions K in one way or another. I don't know if that was planned, but it makes me proud. I assume it makes his family proud too, but I can only speak for myself. And then it's time. I wish I wore the title of wife, so I could have gone up on stage and gotten his hood and his degree. Instead, the dean called his father up and the whole auditorium erupted into a standing ovation. And my tears were uncontrollable, all the emotion pent up behind my eyes all these months streaming full down my face. But not just with sadness friends, with pride. I don't think I was ever prouder of K than I was in that moment. And I KNOW he was proud. And he should be, up there in heaven. I know he was dancing because he always danced a bit. Always for as long as I knew him, a little pop-lock here, Michael Jackson moonwalk step there. Always a bit of a joke to make someone laugh. I know he was laughing, and dancing, and whether or not you believe in heaven or afterlife or anything, I know he was there in that moment, full of pride and completely deserving of all of the love and adoration and sadness that filled the auditorium in that moment.

After, and we're meeting a few people now. Some friends, and parents of students. "This is K's girlfriend" his parents say. And it's true, I am his girlfriend. I'm also his partner, would be wife. Girlfriend is so fleeting, so teenager. I hate it. I hate the casualness, the insignificance. The way it feels like I don't matter when I know I mattered to K more than he ever let on to anyone but me. I can cherish it, sure, but I hated the way I felt pushed to the side. The way the only possessions I have are a few t-shirts from our trips, a hat, a scarf and a leather bracelet. That's it. I don't even have the second copy of his degree that the law school gave (they give two), or the pictures we took together in a photo-booth in Florida, our last vacation (his dad keeps them in his car). I can count the number of photos we have together almost on one hand; we always took pictures of each other, but didn't necessarily take them together. And sure I have photos and memories, but there's something about the way the soul lives on in things, the way our energy embodies the possessions we love, leaving little traces behind everywhere. I wish I had more of those little traces so maybe combined all together I'd have something significant of the person who captured my heart for the last decade of my life.

So now that this chapter is done, the emotion is coming harder and heavier. Tears are disobedient and flowing more freely, more unbidden. Smile through it, smile through it. My anger is quelling and quiet, but still stirs on occasion. My stomach is unsettled with unfairness even now, and my frustration that people think I'm fine because some months have passed is louder than ever. Sometimes I feel like I'm laying just under a pool of shallow water, looking up at the sunlit surface. Everything is slightly off, slightly blurry. And I'm screaming but no one can hear me, I'm drowning so slowly that no one notices. A friend asked if I was okay the other day...the answer is still not really. I don't know when I'll be okay. I don't know if I ever will be (please don't reassure me. It doesn't help. I just want to be heard). My missing is so loud these days, my heart so heavily broken it hurts in my chest. I don't wish for a time machine, except late at night when it's still and loudly silent and I feel like God might have a moment to listen...and then I beg to be just a bit selfish, just to go back and fix that night. I beg to not be alone anymore.

All my love is misplaced and wandering now, and it all feels so wrong. Being "the girlfriend" and having no claim to anything feels wrong. It's all so unnatural to me, and yet I go on. Sometimes I wonder why I do, how I do. I don't know. I just do. And the smiles and laughter...it's all so false. It's all so useless. But here it is anyways, leaking through, trying to convince the rest of me we have to keep living.

And on that note, goodnight friends. May the next time be a little sooner, and just perhaps an inch less painful.

Music Redux: Childish Gambino - I'd Die Without You

Dear K, Part 2 of Many

Dear K,

I felt you near me tonight. I could tell it was you because of the sudden warmth on my skin, like the way you used to come up behind me and wrap your arms around me. The way your presence enveloped mine, and how you were slightly, perfectly taller than me. And I could very nearly smell you, and there was a smile there for a moment carried by a memory: us in Whole Foods, smelling all the natural deodorants until we found the perfect one (because you were so careful with what you put on and in your body). You know I have been in Whole Foods exactly once since you died? And how I still hate those words that go stabbing through me every time I write them? And that my disbelief still roars so loud I rush to cover my ears before I realize it's all coming from inside me?

Oh Lovey, it's been weeks since you have visited me. Why is that? I imagine because it has to be, because there are some great laws of God or metaphysics or the universe (we still aren't on speaking terms, the universe and I) governing all of this in something like a pattern. Something like reason and sensibleness.  I imagine it's because I have to figure out some way to  go on, and how can I go on if all I'm doing is holding on? You had this thing for honesty and integrity so let me tell you true: my mind is rarely on anything but you. All day, every day. All the things I want to tell you. All the things you would find funny or ridiculous or sad. All the times I want to ask you a legal question because I was so impressed at all the knowledge you had from law school. Simple things. Artifacts of our life.

I like to imagine you would be touched by all the things I've written. You were always my primary subject, all the little poems that popped into my head during the day because of how I loved you. How you loved me. The time I stood up in an nearly empty basement in the Student Union and recited the slam poem I wrote for you, about how you were my Adonis and how beautiful you are. How beautiful you were. You are. Past tense is wrong. I don't care. I don't care if I can't hold your hand or kiss you or see your eyes or wear your hats. I don't care if the only way I can hear your voice is an accidental voicemail not even meant for me, or if I'll never get to buy you shoes or hats again. I don't care about any of that because you are not past tense to me. You are here. I feel you and you are here.

I didn't set out for this to be sad. I didn't set out to be crying yet again, or to have my heart to be humming with the way a bird trying to break a cage might. I just wanted to write you a letter because I felt you and I wanted to say hello. Just that simple thing so many take for granted. Hi. Hello. How are you? I still love you. And so I'll sign off with a little missing poem for you, that you might see these words in whatever way you see things now and hold them with you where ever you are.

I'm remembering all the little ways you loved me tonight.
I'm remembering things easy simple,
the smells and soundtracks of our lives,
the imprint of your person on my couch from years
of existing right along side me,
the way you used to flick my fingernails--
drove me crazy but felt like some tangible part of me for you,
before you realized that you had all of me--
and how hard was never nearly hard when you made me laugh,
and when didn't you make me laugh?
and things that are so tiny they aren't even memories
but shy glimmers and shadowy sparks,
and how I never knew I was beautiful
until I was beautiful in your eyes,
and all the ways you made me feel fearless.
All these tiny things I hold now,
and offer back up to keep you
warm and comforted in forever.

Always,

Your Leppy


Music: Ed Sheeran – Give Me Love

The Scratchiest Broken Record Alive

An apology for last night: I couldn't find my words, couldn't get my feet back under me. I wrote it after walking home from a good weekend with a friend, after talking to K's parents because it was Easter and it's been longer than it should be since I called them last, after passing under the Williamsburg Bridge with tears streaming down behind my new sunglasses, after sharing with K's mom the fact that I have his voice on a voicemail in my phone, after thinking about how sad it makes me that I have so much of the man he was and they only have memories of the child. So much After.

And I felt lost again friends, in this new place and new world I am in. I felt dizzyed up in confusion and eagerly afraid all together at once. I felt my heart and lungs and stomach contracting into themselves, dehydrating from this pain that I can hardly describe let alone touch or treat or heal. And I was thinking about how these themes are so damn reoccurring. The lost and lonely. The isolation. The confusion about how I am here and why and what to do. Always what to do with nothing to do at all. I feel like a broken record. I feel like the scratchiest fucking broken record in the world. Sometimes I wonder if these words are nails on a chalkboard to you. It's so easy for friends to forget the place I am in. It's so easy for them to treat me like the Sara they used to know. And I feel bad for them but worse for me, because I can't just remind them all the time, and sometimes I have to play along and it hurts. It fucking hurts to pretend that hard. Who knew Grief had so many kinds of pain? Who knew there were this many ways to feel sick?

I'm feeling vintage tonight. I feel older than I should again, like I'm posted up on someone's shelf, once loved now left behind. I feel dusty and dry, bitterish like tannins and tightened up like a short finish. It's important to write this all down I think, how I feel when I'm feeling at all. I don't think people really get what it's like not to feel because who does that, truly? Psychos and Socios who are out torturing animals before they work up the nerve to try it on a human? That's not me. But truly, I feel nothing. People say they're dead inside, but I wonder if that's just the numbness talking. My nothing is more like absent, some indeterminate hiatus from this plane of being. I guess the fact that I don't know how to get anyone to understand is why I keep trying. And that fact that people say all this is helping them. I can't begin to guess why or how me rambling on about how angry or sad or frustrated I am is helpful to anyone else, but so be it. I don't question anything anymore.

So let's see...how about some lessons making themselves recursive as of recent? I learn so much these days, like not seeking action where there is none. Like letting us be as still as we want without telling us to be gentle with ourselves (that's a repeat from last night, but it's my current source of irksomeness) or to feel the feelings we are trying to find again. It doesn't matter if it's anger or depression or joy, anything that will make us something like tangible and here and accounted for is welcomed. And knowing the only wrong thing to say is to say nothing at all, because then we don't know if you're uncomfortable or uncaring due to the equilibrium of our social queues being off, understandably. That just being with us is so important, that no matter how okay or normal we seem, or how little or much we cry we are still going through something horrible. How important it is to know and remember and do the best as best can be with any of us at all, the way we are so tiresome in our sadness. And the thing is, we know this. But it is not to be helped for some time. And that just sucks.

And realizing the converse of all that is all the people who want us to listen. Maybe because we've become so still, we seem like a receptacle for other people's stories/problems/existence? Maybe because we are empty, others desire to fill us up, selfishly or not, I don't know. And no matter how we react or don't, we are not ungrateful. We are incapable. It's different, you see, because it is surviving, or maybe living once in a while if the day is especially bright. So here I am, your favorite broken record played on repeat. But it bears repeating. It bears trying to fill in our gaps and blanks, understanding and compassion that cannot be returned just now, and so many other things. Just being with us in time and space, grounding us back to this earth and this reality. Keeping us here because the locale we desire is (must be, so important) unobtainable to us. Because holy fuck we just can't believe this our life, and how are we still breathing or existing at all? Don't talk about strength or anything else. We aren't strong, we are just here. We just exist and that is not strength but a bar set low for living, and that is okay. It's okay to not be encouraged or uplifted. It's okay to just be.

I spend a lot of time figuring out what is okay. I hope you haven't minded so much that I decided to share.

Love.

This is Anger

I am unpredictable. Not my emotions, but me. I have no baseline for any response, and offense happens easy. Too easy and it makes me uncomfortable, my own pendulum of happysadangryemptynumb, my own foreignness. I feel xenophobic about myself. Is that even possible? Maybe in some irony. As much so as the fact that there is comfort and familiarity in the way I start hyperventilating rage and yet there remains a grave concern in myself for my inability to tamp down that same anger. This whole bit, this is anger. It's going to be as rough to read as it is to admit, and I wouldn't blame you for stopping now. Just don't judge me too harsh tonight, friends.

Here is something that makes me very angry as of late: anyone trying to identify with my situation. I'm an asshole tonight. Empathy and sympathy such close bedfellows, but the mere suggestion shoots off exploding shiny spots of anger in my brain. The parent of someone they cared about, a friend of a friend, someone they were tangentially close to. Fuck outta here. The anger is so loud then, because how dare they? What gives them the right? I'm an asshole for that too. Everyone is different, and death touches us all. And we react differently. I know this. There is rationality and caring in there too, but I just feel so raw. And so few people have lost their partner the way I have, with the jolting suddenness. With the lack of expectation or preparation. And to be frank, with youth. So don't suggest you get it. You don't. This is Anger talking now. Forgive me. Forgive how I am all metallic and right angles, glass frozen in ice, shards of quick to furry and unforgiving of your trespass. Forgive me when I cannot forgive you. It is unfair to ask, but nothing about any of this is fair.

All this anger rolls over me, rolls me over; themes of oceans and tides maybe, or a strong wind. Color it with something violent underneath, make it ugly. Make it hurt. Let's hurt something beautiful today. Utterly obliterate the innocent. I want scalding water dripped slowly on skin, I want stoning. Give me buried alive, something slow and murderous. Let's get horrific. Let's make it abominable. Oh but Sara, this isn't you. This isn't who we know. I'm sorry, but welcome to me, in After. Welcome to I don't know myself anymore, welcome to when will the space behind my eyes stop being empty. Welcome to when will I be present, when will I care? Welcome to how anger simmers just below my surface, and you'll never know because control. Because smiles. Because easy going. Because I can't let it consume me. Because anger is not me, not forever. Because something more sinister: I am a very good liar now.

I don't want to post this. I don't want you to know this truth, whoever you are right now, reading this. I hate the anger. I hate how easy it is to go to that place, that royal injustice so deep it is a splinter ten miles long through every inch of my body. I'm toying with deleting this. But I got so angry writing it, I have to believe it wants release. I've said I was ugly before, and here is the ugliest. Here is the most pathetic, the most embarrassing. And maybe the most honest, all laid out and spread before you. Judge me. Or don't. Sympathize. Or don't. Know it's not desire that is this anger, but consumption. It is disgusting, but delicious. It is satisfying, because it is feeling. It's the heady smokiness, crowded like a room, where otherwise there is absence. Where otherwise it is empty. And who wouldn't take the fulfillment of fullness over standing in the biggest, emptiest canyon and echoing against yourself forever, mired in solitude. Alone.

So I just breathed out friends. This whole time, holding my breath, writing this. All clenched up and mean. And scared. Because anger is fear. And I have told you and will tell you more, it is terrifying to be this empty. It is terrifying to be new and exposed. And I have no idea who I am. I have no idea who I will become. A friend said this was exciting, this development. This reinvention, this new persona that can be crafted as intentionally or as lazily as I might prefer. Maybe that's true, but I'm not there yet. I still feel like I can't touch bottom, so how can I learn to swim? I can't, just yet. Or won't. I don't know. I do know shock is wearing off and wearing me down. Days have been darker, my personal fog denser and more impenetrable. I imagine if you feel energy and color in the world the way I do (yes I am odd in more ways than just Grieving), I must be some indescribable mix of dirty hues and shades of shadows and tones that exist in nightmares. I said let's get horrific, didn't I?

At work, someone decided my project managers needed to be made aware of "what was going on with me." What is going on with me, actually? Let's have that conversation, please. Let's have the conversation that you have so little idea of what is going on with me, you couldn't define it if it was happening to you. I am an asshole tonight. You all reading this sputter, but maybe they were concerned, possibly caring, possibly trying to help. Possibly some bullshit I won't buy. Tell me when you are eggshells and krazy glue and misery, and you still show up. Tell me when you are still there when by all rights, you should be anywhere else. Fuck it all. Tonight is so angry, friends. Days are angry too, but good sunlight and better company tempers that. I just can't stand that kind of judgement, that kind of false help. It's already hard, it already takes so much trying.

I hope you understand that sometimes it's best just to get it out. It's some kind of tapeworm, this anger, breaking up into little pieces and retreating back parasitic from prying and digging, from the impending excavation. I cannot wait for Somehow. I cannot wait to be myself again, whoever that person becomes. The road is long and uncertain, but I walk, and walk. I love to walk these days.

So much anger put out here, but mixed in to the way I love you for the support, the comments, the reaching out to connect. I am still the Sara you know, I promise (as much to myself as to you).

Order of Operations

I think lately I've been trying to find my voice again. My poetry, my cadence, my prose. Everyone who has read my blog and has said I should write a book, thank you. I appreciate that. This post though, it isn't like that. It's not trying to describe my feelings. It's memories. And memories are often ugly. No apologies, just facts. So let me give you the first memory from After:

8am, give or take. Cold, although the heat's always on too high in my apartment. There is fuzziness, confusion. Everything wavy and slightly surreal. It's too early; I haven't slept much and my head is pounding like it knows we're not sleeping again for months. Maybe ever. I try to put my contacts in, manage one, and leave the other on the sink where it will remain, dried out and sad when I come back to my apartment hours (days? weeks?) later. Take out the other, toss it in the trash. Put my glasses back on. Pace, pace, pace. Talk to my cats, try to explain to the them with no words. Cry a little. Sit. Stand. You see, I am waiting for the police to come and take me to K's parent's house, because this is the morning that K has died. His brother's voice is echoing in my ear. My voice is echoing in my chest from having just gotten off the phone with my parents. Echoes all around. I am remembering this for you because it recently came flooding back to me.

Over the past year or so, K and I were fortunate to make two very good friends. A couple out of Chicago, who went to college with us. I'll call them the Travelers, because they've managed to see the world in a way most people in their late 20s/early 30s don't. We didn't know them so well in school, though K played basketball on occasion with Mr. Traveler. On the day of K's death, one of the first phone calls I made was to this couple. I'm not sure why, but it felt right. And that has pretty much been the name of the game ever since. So just recently I received a save the date from the Travelers, who will be married in a few months. And I was absolutely elated. But as I read the email, I teared up. And my high started to drift towards a low. You see, K and I would have attended together. And even more so, our friends are so very similar to us. Met at college, dated for many years afterwards, made a life together, finally getting married. Echoes all around. After the funeral, Mrs. Traveler sent me a message that relayed a similar idea. All our parallels. So my joy for them is the joy I would have had for myself, and my sorrow is the sorrow she could have had, in a different version of this life.

Another memory now: Dropped off at K's parent's house, there is an ambulance outside, and four or five police. The officer who dropped me, he says if I can be strong for the family, that would be best. He tells me K's mom is having a hard time. The ambulance is there for her, just in case, and regardless of that, I don't doubt the scene I will find inside. This is a mother who has lost her first born, after all. A hard time would be a massive understatement. But this officer, he doesn't know our history. He doesn't know that this is my husband who has died, that we were boyfriend and girlfriend in title only, but the heart is different. Time is different. But I have always had a strange sense of duty, a way of doing what's asked of me, somehow.

And so a few hours later, I find myself in K's parent's kitchen, surrounded by aunts, uncles, cousins. Sitting on a wooden chair, trying to stay warm. It's cold and clear this day, but the cold is the kind that wraps around your heart and pulls on your organs, the clarity reminding you that you're still here. That I'm still here, when K is not. On any other day, had we been up early, I would have inhaled deeply and told K it was the kind of morning that made you feel life. But on this day, I cannot feel life with K; instead there is only the continuity from one moment to the next, each tip toeing further away from the last time I saw the love of my life alive.

And I'm sitting there, stoic. Strong for the family echoes in my short term memory. I've been carrying that particular echo for a while now, I think, these past few months. But that day especially, I held it well, that strength for the family. Phone calls and all that. And then suddenly, I am crying, because it just occurs to me how backwards all this is. And I'm telling his uncle and aunt how we were supposed to grow old together. I say that over and over, because that was my reality. I was never the kind of girl to plan her ideal wedding or any of that. But this was my life partner, my love, my spouse in my heart before God and the universe and all else, regardless of rings or papers or promises. And all of that is lost to me now.

And that's really what gets me down a lot of the time. Things are all out of order now. We had nine years together before K got snatched out of my life. Who knew old meant a few grey hairs as I entered my 30s, or that forever had a time limit? I am so excited to celebrate with The Travelers later this year, but when I dance, it won't be the way I would have danced with K. There is a certain joy in being that way you know, a natural rhythm that you have moving through space next to someone who fills your heart. I've thought a lot about the fairness of things, why some people get their partners and I do not get mine. I am intrinsically happy for anyone who finds love that way, but there are elements of jealousy too. I wouldn't be honest if I pretended I never felt it, and if there is one thing I won't do it is lie here in this place. Enough of those go on on to get us through the day, the lies we tell to keep us going, so let's have some truth, yeah?

Fuck 2014

I'm done with this year ya'll. I'm done with the universe picking off all our loved ones. People keep telling me it's the dying season. Fuck the dying season. Fuck reading a new status message every few days about yet another young person dying. Or someone's parent. Or someone's partner. I just...I can't.

Yesterday was the 2nd month anniversary of K's death. I still have a hard time typing that. Because every time I do, it makes it real. I don't know when I'll be able to type that, or say it, without feeling like if only I didn't say it, it wouldn't be true. I remember when we first started dating, I made us celebrate all of our month anniversaries. We'd been dating for a few weeks at the time, but made things official Nov 30th, 2004. So it was always the 30th of the month, until we hit one year. Now I wonder if I'm going to keep counting the months, until they become years. The 18th. The fucking 18th of every month for the next year. And then January 18th. November 30th. October 16th, his birthday. Those are the days that matter. Birth, love, death. All it boils down to in the end, made up out of 3 days each year my heart will catch a little.

I spend a lot of time wandering between remembering and forgetting. Forgetting the why and the how, but trying not to lose this beautiful person who I made so many memories with. For some reason, I remembered the first time K took me around people he knew as his girlfriend. It was this dance in his dorm, and he invited me. He wore a blue checked flannel shirt, black slacks and shiny black shoes. I remember how shiny his shoes were because of how well he danced. He was a great dancer. And I wore this spanish influenced black dress with red roses. And I remember at one point, he was spinning me, and salsa dancing, and all this other stuff while everyone else did the awkward two step with stiff arms on hips and shoulders. It was like a middle school dance where everyone was a little taller. K and I never two-stepped though, we always dance danced. And at one point, the Destiny's Child song Solider came on. And the whole room made a circle around us, dancing as we were. And every time the chorus would come on, they'd point at K. He was a little embarrassed, but also proud I think. It wasn't far into our relationship, but after that, I knew I loved him.

Through our relationship, I always felt that way, like he was my solider. Always there to protect me. And somehow, I couldn't return it. The only time it every actually mattered, I couldn't protect him.

Here's a poem I wrote, about how I've been feeling. About time and some other things. I'm trying to document these a little better, because sometimes poetry just feels so right.

I've been wondering about how time passes,
about long lines of possibility,
and the choices we make.
And how months feel like years and seconds
all at once somehow blurring by, 
tenuously. Everything so damn tenuous. 

I can't stop remembering the last time I saw you,
every second larger than
the life you left,
all in perfectly painted detail on my memory,
because time stopped then
--and my heart started beating broken--
and here I am,
monthssecondsyears passing me by,
still trying to understand how this is truth,
and what kind of cruelty exists that
our world takes you and leaves me, empty
and searching.

I'd be alright, if I could just see you.
I'll be alright, when time stops passing
lonely and broken like this.


Because I'm so over  2014, I've decided to publish this blog. I've had it secret for a little while, not sure what I wanted to do with it. I wanted to add some more entries maybe, make it feel more complete before I offered it up to the world. Opened myself up to everyone. But how can I sit on everything I'm going through, when so many people are sharing my experience? I want us all to heal by the commonality of the human experiences of Grief and Sorrow, not sit seemingly placid and quiet to the world while we break down inside. And lord knows I've been breaking down inside more and more. The outside though, that porcelain facade is on lock. Don't worry about me though, it's not a bad thing. I don't know how else I would get through my day. 

Love.

The Many Faces of Guilt

There are so many things I want to write about. All these things that have been swirling around inside me for the past few weeks with no where to go. I realize I think all the time...not that I didn't before, but there is never that moment in time where things get silent. It's always some kind of chatter.

In the midst of all that noise, I've been thinking about guilt. The kind of guilt that keeps you stuck and the kind of guilt that keeps you going. I've been thinking about how guilt is the gate keeper. There's the stage of Grief that is bargaining, the what ifs, if only I hads, why didn't I justs. I've kept those pretty quiet. It'd be easy to say "why didn't I make him stay" or "why didn't I make him promise to wear his seat belt." All that bargaining just rips us wide open and lays us bare. And it makes us feel like we have control...but here's the thing: we don't.

Surprised? well, I'd imagine you're either Free Will or by God's grace, and neither philosophy has room for a third party and our concerns about whats ifs and if onlys. Did I mention I'm pretty tough love? Well, I am. More for myself, but hey, if it helps someone else, by all means. The idea that we have control is the basis for the kind of guilt that keeps us stuck, the kind where we believe we could have done something to stop our loved ones from dying. But in my reality, K could have gotten in that car any night and had that accident any night. The conditions were clear, and without knowing why it happened (only issues with the car having been ruled out), the factors could have combined themselves in that way any other day. Or never. Or it could have been some other event that claimed his life.

I mean, there's some tiny fraction of a percent that makes anything happen the way it does. You never think about how many times a day you could have died. It's probably really good we have no idea how close we all really are. I don't have any stats on this, but I'm just thinking about it. Random combinations of random factors that have random outcomes. Pushed a fraction one way, life. Pushed a fraction the other, death. So I don't dwell. In the beginning, I bargained like hell. As the last person to see or speak to K, to consider he drove my car from my house, late at night. I certainly felt a responsibility...I still do. But I don't feel at fault. I think we all just need to give up the notion that we control anything. We don't. Even with free will. You make decisions, sure, but you can't effect an outcome past the initial decision that started you down that path. I'm not a philosopher, so let me leave that all alone for now. But just think on it sometime, on a night when you're plagued with chatter.

Then there's the other type of guilt. It lights a fire under us. It's the kind where I ask what K would want me to do. Or what he would have done if it had been me instead of him (which makes my mom so distraught, but it's a fair question to pose). It's the type of guilt that makes me feel like I could be disappointing him somehow. It's the kind that makes me want to live life to the fullest, because he doesn't get to. Like if I don't, I'm dishonoring his memory. When K applied for law school, he wrote a lot about legacy. Neither of us could have ever imagined his legacy would be defined by what he did in 28 short years. So in a way, I feel a responsibility to help him create the legacy he didn't get to leave. I'm working on setting up a scholarship in his name at our alma mater, and his little brother, who is my little brother now, is someone I will always watch out for and take care of.

So if you're mired in guilt, my request to you is not to let it be the handicapping kind, but the kind that inspires you and pushes you on to really LIVE for the person you're grieving for. And don't wait to think about your legacy. You don't know if you have 28 or 78 years to create it, so don't wait. We all have such a short time here, no matter how many actual years we live, so don't wait to leave your mark, if you want to leave one at all. If there's something you want to do, do it. I know I will be.

Love.