guardian angel

i have lost friends. dear, best, perfect, soft-skin friends. lost dreams and lost legs. i have lost breaths and favorite pens. but i have never lost, i have never missed someone like i miss ivan. it is deeper than my skin. it's an ache deeper than my bones. and it's not crushing, not new, it doesn't keep me from having fun or getting things done but it doesn't go away. it doesn't get less. it follows me. it's become a part of who i am.

i carry this loss like i carry my courage. close against my chest. it terrifies me. but i can't let go.

and i feel him with me all the time. look up at him when i get spit on or when the ground caves in. he follows me and i never knew if i believed in any of these things but he is with me when i look and he is beside me when i look away.

like a guardian angel or a omnipresent best friend or like he always has been. just quietly listening until he knew it was time and that i was ready to let him make me laugh again.

a bride

i have been a bride and i have been a bitch and i have watched the door close behind him.

i have learned some things.

and i won't fight your battles and i won't mend your wounds and i won't watch my days slip through the sunsets.

dance dance where ever you may be.

so christmas is almost here. it's been a year since ivan died and it's hard not to get caught in the grief but i don't want to lose christmas to suicide and nostalgia.
because i love christmas. love spending time with family and the smell of the christmas tree and the beautiful lights and cookies and bagels and the magic and the surprise with giving giving giving. i love going to the christmas revels with my family each year and filling stockings. i love everything about a time of year that celebrates love and kindness and peace on earth. because in my family that is what this time is about.

and i am lucky to have my family.

and i am so grateful that i don't have to have that other family tarnish my memories with their judgments and their hate ever again.

and so much is on the horizon for joe and i. where will we live? where will we go to school? a new home. time to lay roots. it is all so exciting.

and i will think of ivan and of those christmas eve's years ago and the bent cards with my name misspelled that he would give me and that i still have in my top desk drawer. and i will bake cookies and watch christmas movies with joe in the home we have fought hard to make real and warm and safe for us.

i like believing for a month each year in peace on earth and the loveliness of being a child.

holiday cheer

i love christmas. i have always loved christmas.

i don't know why now it just makes me feel sad.

ugly side

i have seen your ugly side. i have watched you punch holes through the boards and the beds and the places i lay my head. i have watched you drown things that didn't even belong to you. i have held my breath for days on end.

you took things from me that i didn't even know i had to give. you broke things in me that i didn't even know could break.

i have spent nights pacing the halls waiting for you to take it back. i made myself small. i have closed my eyes and opened them again and again waiting to see something else but its always the same old thing again and again.

you gone. me here.

the sound of a gun and your head.

i promised things to myself before. i will make those promises again.

you know the ones.

don't live in fear. don't let it control you. it's not your fault. it will get better.

those mantras that i want to believe. that i want to live. that i almost felt but there is always something. and there always will be.

that's just the things isn't it. if its not your dysfunction, it is mine. and i never realized until very very recently how lucky i have been my whole life to have this family that i have and not yours. and maybe i don't have my health but i have my will and bygod it's stronger than alot of what they have got.

i have seen your ugly side. and i have mine. and i will sit in this quiet place for the rest of our time. i didn't want you to leave. i didn't mean to let you be anything but fine/mine.

these days

my cousin had an accident and is in the icu right now with a subdural hematoma and skull fracture. and by accident i mean he fell somehow and hit is head bad. he doesn't actually remember. we don't really know.

and we have been waiting to hear anything for too long and i just want to know.

and isn't that funny how seven years ago next friday i ended up in icu after my own fall.

it's hard to know what to be afraid of when its the stupid things like walking into your bathroom after work that nearly get you killed.

things i had

there was white light and floating on your back and sunsplashes and freckled noses and whispers that said things like 'hold my hand' and there was full speed ahead and not even caring about the stones we left unturned because there was peace in the motion there was promise in the healing there was serenity now and.

and i woke up to the first frost and this bright fall sun and i realized that i have surpassed the part of recovery where things can only get better.

things are starting to get worse.

this summer: my stomach.
this fall: my leg.

and it knocks the wind out of me just the slightest bit.

it just that this part never even dawned on me.