A Check In

It's been a long time. I think the reason I'm writing here mostly is because I hate to leave off where I did. The last few years have been a whirlwind for most people, including myself. Yesterday I was running and every once in a while things hit me. I miss Sparcky within my bones and my marrow. I realized yesterday that he is my idea of family and my memory of love. It's the holiday season and this year is just very much a season waiting to pass. It's been over a year now since he passed and although most days I hate thinking about how my memories are becoming more faded - I know in my heart that he was the most real thing I'd ever known. 

I came back here to look for photos of him. I started writing here in 2013. That's almost ten years ago. It's insane to look back at the posts and also so beautiful seeing how this little space really was the foundation for what my life is now. Seeing the early imprints of blogging and photography and passion. I can't believe I'm a photographer today. I can't believe I'm happy most days. I can't believe I found Shay and have the kind of love from him I dreamt of all my life. We're human, he and I. We are so very raw and burnt and torn and scratched from our lives and our pasts but what he and I have built for each other is something younger me could have only dreamed about. Writing isn't something I typically do when I'm feeling happy. I like to know that and realize that's why I haven't needed to write in such a long time. I just read my last words on him and realized I wanted to update this corner of my memory. He still has his back pain. I still have my depression. We are so much bigger than our pains. We are partners. We have two puppies and a kitten. We have a home. We began traveling this year and working together. I don't know what I want to say but I do just want to imprint it in these pages that he is and always will be my savior. It's the last week of twenty twenty-two. Next year I'm turning twenty-eight. I'm not young anymore. I'm more my own person than I ever have been and I'm growing still, healing still, breaking still. 

I'm actually looking forward to a new year. I'm still awkward. I'm still myself. I'm just becoming her more and more every day. 

February

 I think Sparcky's death really changed me. I think somewhere in my heart I thought if I could love something enough it would never leave me. If I just did what I was supposed to - time and life wouldn't deal me the same cards. Shay and I are having issues. I don't remember when it started, I don't really know if it was any one thing or if it just changed. I think life started happening. I guess a lot of people say to look at a relationship as something that sets the tone from the beginning. Our beginning wasn't pretty. It was harsh and cruel and he told me he'd never be able to love me. 

I was young. I honestly didn't think it would ever matter or be important if he loved me back. I told myself I felt it back. He loved me. My bones felt loved and my world changed. I can't even compare anything I'm thinking about today to anything I've even considered in the last seven years. 

I know there was a point where I felt like he'd never love me. It would be so easy to say that I want something different and that's why I know somethings wrong. But I don't want different. I don't want anything. I think I opened my soul to someone and I realized that they didn't want it. He didn't want it. 

I don't feel alone without my family. I think something happened where I accepted that they're not in my life when Sparcky passed. I think he closed the door. Without that fear of not being loved by them, I think I started looking at other things. I don't know if what I want is someone to feel about me the way people romanticize about their person in the beginning. I don't think it's that - I know the butterflies aren't supposed to last. But I want to feel wanted. 

More so, I want to know that in ten years I won't feel alone. And I can't say I won't when I feel so alone now. I don't know if it was his injury. I don't know if his injury is worse because he's in my life. I do know things changed and they're never going to be the same again. And I don't think those things matter to him. 

I think he wants me to just accept that. But I want someone to want me to be happy. Is there a reason we haven't had a child? Am I not supposed to be with this man? I just know it was always a give and take. I know in my being that I would feel connected. I can't find the connection. I don't want to live my life for someone else. I'm about to turn twenty-seven. I am a grown woman. I shouldn't be waiting around for a man to want to be around me, want to kiss me, want to connect. That's so childish, so young.

If you don't want me, then why am I still here? Why are we living together like roommates. Why did we get dogs together but I'm the only one who takes care of them? Why am I so alone.

Antidepressants. 

Forever

Forever.

Sad Happiness

 I’m happy to be able to be sad. Emotions are my foundation. I felt so much pain that it felt like living in pain meant being alive. I remember my body bleeding years and trembling with emotions. Every month. Every day. I’d bleed and I’d cry and it felt like being alive. I’d feel a song in my sternum and I’d open my eyes to see endings. It was how I lived. How I survived. How I created and how I prepared to die. 

Every day was a sad song and emotions had this stranglehold on my oblivion. It felt encompassing, high. It felt like my soul was preparing to be buried every day and I would shovel myself deeper preparing for death. A blissful death. A happy death. An emotional grave and I fucking loved it, I felt it. I felt my bones. I let it hold me. And then I realized I was twenty-two and I’d buried myself in a grave with all these years left to live. It was so confusing, I felt so much and somehow was meant to go on living. The love and pain was brutal. And I didn’t know how to breathe from my grave. If I wasn’t going to die, I needed to stop living. 

I turned off.

I switched my power off. Power. The way I’m able to encompass myself in emotions is a power that many people beg to feel. Shay. In a way he saved me by being the reason I had to turn off. He was in my veins. When I close my eyes, my body hums with him. The windy car rides, the music, the smiles, the existence. Our touches and laughter. I remember seeing life for the first time with him and simultaneously wanting to gauge out my eye sockets without him around. I couldn’t imagine seeing without him. I didn’t realize I could live with him inside of my skeleton. I didn’t know it was possible to breathe him inside me and get to keep him.

I thought love had to mean sadness and I couldn’t imagine living without him. I thought I had to. I had to prepare the grief that living with him would entail. I had to feel pain to feel love and I loved him so much, so selfishly I couldn’t lose him. I couldn’t give him up. So I turned myself off. Turned off the love, dulled it. Dulled myself to drink him in for eternity rather than a moment.

I thought I was meant to remember him and never considered I was meant to become a part of him. I thought love was meant to be a past. Passing love. Memories. Art. Pain. 

A future was turned off. I was twenty two and didn’t think I’d be twenty seven and still get to see him with my eye sockets. I stopped looking. I stopped seeing. I felt him around me and allowed his time to consume me.

And when my stubborn love wanted more I had to drown it down. And I took pills to turn off. Because there was more than him that I didn’t understand. How was he supposed to stay when no one else did? 

But he did. Six years. Six years of waking up to his hum. While my body tore my skeleton apart and broke every bone of memories and pain, he carved himself inside me. I feel him. I felt him.

I’ve been listening to sad songs. And laughing. I’ve been looking at shay and experiencing him. Envisioning adventures and feeling love. Our love is enveloping. It hasn’t faded an inch. It’s on a threshold that has more and without my medication my body is craving to feel him. To be with him. To show him a touch of how much I could.

We don’t have to be a story that ends. My mothers love can become my love to be a mother. I want his bones to make a mini pocket version that I can keep and love and encompass. I prepared to lose someone I love. That’s what you don’t understand when you’re young. You don’t have to stop loving anything. Or anyone. You. You don’t have to fucking do anything. The only thing you have to do one day is die. But you don’t have to die when you’re living. 

It’s terrifying being open and vulnerable and available and present. But it’s the most beautiful power I have. And it makes me beautiful. I’m beautiful. Not my flesh and bones and body.

My soul is so beautiful. My heart. My love. My art. 

I used to think Shay made me worthy and beautiful. He just allowed me to see how beautiful I am. I’ve been this beautiful my entire life. This loving. This adoring. Poetic power. He’s in my veins and my soul and I’m in his.

And if there were a day where he did become a memory, my beauty wouldn’t fade. It would only grow. 

I’m growing up. I’m loving myself. My soul. I feel everything and never want to feel nothing again. 

I’m so strong. I can feel it all. Everything. 

Thick skin

 I’m not a candidate for a nose job. That’s what I found out today. Oof. Lol speechless and upset.

Tense Hands

 Tense hands. Jointed fists. I’m so tense, clashing teeth. I’m so comfortable in my head and am enjoying my surroundings but man, I am so annoyed with everyone else. They aren’t doing enough. Thinking enough. Understanding. I’ve been less focused on food and self defeating behavior but also feel selfish, feel personal, feel happy inside myself and annoyed with anyone who disturbs my alone time. Work outs bring out the worst of my thoughts, the most resistance. My body hurts, my brain is tired from work and my partner is like a hawk watching my every move. It doesn’t do everything it does for him and sometimes it’s a battle. I’m hanging onto negative passing words again. I can feel it. Sitting outside my brain I’m looking at what I’m remembering about the day and it pulls those negative seconds and makes it an entire day. Ticking second that condone an entire existence. Breathe. Exhale. Write. Not everything is meant to attack, attach, impale. 

I’m also suddenly noticing my insecurities again. They don’t even feel like insecurities, they feel like annoyances that I’m sick of being annoyed with. I called a doctor to consult for rhinoplasty and suddenly have no fear. Food doesn’t look good because feeling good and looking good suddenly matter. It’s a confusing time right now.

Nightmares are back, thoughts are back. I think I can make it out better. But I notice it. The darkness. It’s awake.