loss

“I guess by now I should know enough about loss to realize that you never really stop missing someone-you just learn to live around the huge gaping hole of their absence.” ― Alyson Noel

i want to write about loss. i want to write about the feelings of abandonment that come with loss. i want to write about how it feels to lose someone you love. but it is hard to find the words. 

i named this blog after 2 dear friends who died. april, who died in a fire 16 years ago, and gigi who died of viral myocarditis 18 years ago ( http://www.myocarditisfoundation.org/about-myocarditis/ ). both of these women were 18 when they died. both of these women had a huge impact on my life. 

“You’ll get over it…” It’s the clichés that cause the trouble. To lose someone you love is to alter your life for ever. You don’t get over it because ‘it” is the person you loved. The pain stops, there are new people, but the gap never closes. How could it? The particularness of someone who mattered enough to grieve over is not made anodyne by death. This hole in my heart is in the shape of you and no-one else can fit it. Why would I want them to?” ― Jeanette Winterson

get over it. you can't get over loss. you can't get over a person who you loved. because you loved them. and love endures, and love lives in you, and love holds on to you. my first girlfriend told me, "love it's like a tap that you can turn on and off." so there is no such thing as "getting over" loss. you can become stronger. it can hurt less and less. and it becomes a part of you. 

“Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.” ― Edna St. Vincent Millay

missing someone who is gone hurts. it is the kind of hurt that can't be seen. the kind of hurt that there are no words for. the kind of hurt that lingers quietly inside you, shrieking silently. 

“When someone you love dies, and you're not expecting it, you don't lose her all at once; you lose her in pieces over a long time—the way the mail stops coming, and her scent fades from the pillows and even from the clothes in her closet and drawers. Gradually, you accumulate the parts of her that are gone. Just when the day comes—when there's a particular missing part that overwhelms you with the feeling that she's gone, forever—there comes another day, and another specifically missing part.” 

― John Irving

i don't remember gigi's voice anymore. i don't remember her laugh. what i do remember is how she made me feel. that is what stays. the love stays. the feeling that i mattered. that i was important. that i was worthy and deserving of her friendship. those feelings don't disappear. 

“You never knew the last time you were seeing someone. You didn't know when the last argument happened, or the last time you had sex, or the last time you looked into their eyes and thanked God they were in your life.

After they were gone?

That was all you thought about.

Day and night.” 

― J.R. Ward

the last thing that april said to me was, "i have so much to tell you ..." she was wearing purple overalls and was bouncing around the parking lot at the walmart, about to get a ride home from a woman she had a big crush on. a woman who used to be her teacher. april was thrilled to be getting a ride from A, and had news to share with me about her life ... i never got to hear the news. i never found out what the "so much" was that she wanted to tell me. 

the week before, she had shown up at my house wearing a yellow sarong ... and nothing else. she had taken the bus to my house wearing nothing but a yellow sarong. seriously. NOTHING. not even shoes. we lay on my bed, staring at the ceiling and talking about life, and love, and making plans. 

the last thing i said to gigi was "i'll talk to you tomorrow." she was headed to a new years eve party and wanted me to go with her. but i didn't want to. so she went to the party alone and she died there. i can't explain to you the guilt that comes with not having gone to that party with her. even though she would have died anyway. there was nothing i could have done. but i could have been there with her. 

“Oh, sometimes I think it is of no use to make friends. They only go out of your life after awhile and leave a hurt that is worse than the emptiness before they came.” ― L.M. Montgomery

loss hurts. loss is an ache. loss has no words. and yet, i try repeatedly to find the words to express the feelings of losing someone. 

tomorrow i am being given a file folder with letters from gigi that i had locked in a safety deposit box. i don't remember what is in the box. but i will be getting a piece of her back. i will be getting words. 



be kind to yourself, 

xoxo

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