It has been a long time since I've written anything new. I have felt so trapped, so anxious of what to say and so afraid it will be the wrong thing. I have always firmly believed that the best writing comes from the times of greatest pain, yet when my greatest pain hit this year, I closed up all my journals. I logged out of the account to take me to this source of writing. It felt too much to bear; I could not look back at myself without disgust. This horrible, terrible thing had happened and I could not believe I had ever complained about much of what I did. Pain, hot and persistent, had wormed its way into my brain stem.
It is still there. I am still in pain, I am still sad. I was not myself this year, and this made me so incredibly upset that I was sure I'd split myself in two. I would explode, I would do something, then I'd lock myself in whatever vessel was closest to me. The bathrooms, church confessionals, libraries and classrooms of Massachusetts and Vermont have seen me at my worst. I don't know how to reconcile my pain with my life. I just don't. It was there, last October, with the five. The pain was there. But so was the overwhelming love. Now, after the election, the breakup, the past year, the love was not there. My world has effectively been torn apart and I do not know how to piece it back together.
This has always been something I'm good at. Picking up the pieces after I've failed to keep them together. I didn't let my terrible geometry grade tear me apart in ninth grade, I didn't let my terrible skiing tear me apart in tenth grade, I didn't let the terrible things that happened in April to tear me apart in eleventh grade, I didn't let my first stinging college rejection tear me apart in twelfth grade. I was momentarily stopped at the metaphoric gates, but I sat back up, gathered myself, and I kept going. Last year, when I thought the worst had happened, I took all the love I felt around me and let it protect me. And I was okay.
November, the election hit. January, it really hit. Every week after that seems like a dream, the week before Valentines a nightmare. I have never been down for this long, have never been this unsure of how to gather myself. I mark my life's events in months, and September 2017 will live on for a good long time as the month that she died. I can't bring myself to write her name here. I can't do her justice. No one could. That is how I will remember her.
My reaction, now, is to cry. I used to want to fight. The truth is, I don't know how to fight any more. I really do not. I am used to being a person that is confident in their decision making. I have a strong compass that I follow and until this year, I have not felt truly lost. I am now, adrift and uncertain of what to be, do, how to feel or love. Everything means that much more to me. Everything. No matter what I do, every single action, every single eyelash blink, can move my world. I wish things were not this way, because I do not know this version of me. She is new, will take a lot of getting used to. She is incredibly broken and disappointed and so bone-tired of existing. It won't always be this way, I think. I can't see anything clearly, right now.
I hope one day soon, I will start writing here again. For now, though, I just can't. I have tried so hard, and even what I've said here is not good enough. It never will be. Life is more than can be encapsulated within words. Hers certainly was. And it is messy, and so sad that it will most certainly break a heart you did not think could be broken any more. It is all the more beautiful for being so.
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"You're still young, that's your fault,
there's so much you have to go through."
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