Stubborn love.

Hey again. I know, I haven’t written in a while. It’s not because I don’t want to. I want to all the time. I think about it every day. But sometimes it’s just too hard. Sometimes it makes it too real.

¶ A tragedy can change your perspective. One that hits too close to home, weighs so heavy on your heart that you feel like it might fall and break,

one that will stay with you forever can change your perspective again, and again, and again.

It has this magnificent way of keeping you in the past while time moves forward. You question everything. Days are long and blend together. You question reality. You spend time with people you love because all you know how to do is appreciate their love and be together. You fall into old photos, mixing up memories with now. Everyone says they feel numb and there’s this buzzing in the air, of thoughts you’re all thinking but ~~don’t~~ can’t say.

So I stopped writing on this blog; I stopped writing everywhere. There was something more important to do than take pictures of cats and tell you what I ate today. I ate like crap, to be honest. And I drank beer with my friends. And fell asleep on their couch, face first in a Chinese food coma.

And then I got up.

And I made sure I worked out, sometimes fighting back tears, because it made me feel. And I had to feel something. I had to be able to control… something.

Because yoga is about emotion and breath, and weight training reminds me I’m strong.

We went to the beach and ran in the icy water, took a drive to East Moriches for the view, slept on air mattresses with our best friends, listened to The Lumineers.

We ate pizza on cushioned couches in backyards overlooking the bay. We hugged each other longer, said I love you more – each one of us trying to be strong, and trying to be stronger for someone else.

We didn’t work for days.

Eventually, I opened my old journal. The one I turn to when my mind can’t hold my emotions in any longer. The one that has held years of courage, years of strength.

I found the letter I wrote to my grandmother, the one I read at her wake. I found the letter I wrote to Erik, the beautiful friend we lost at 19. I found the poems I wrote in college, the ones where I was lost, too, but finding myself.

And I wrote. Just a little, but I wrote.