Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Dear Robbie

Your birthday is Monday. And so another year has passed without you here. It went quickly this time. Most days appear to be happening faster than I think I like.

Some days are better than others. Where I can see a sunrise and not be disappointed one of my best friends isn’t there to see it. Where opening my mouth to inhale doesn’t hurt because you aren’t able to do the same.

If I had loved you more. If I had loved you better. Would that have made a difference? Probably not. I know what it’s like to be chained to the whirlpool of thoughts dragging a person to the bottom. I know there’s very little, if anything, that looks like hope. That looks like something to hold onto with every bit of strength left.

I love so hard. I put everything I have in me into making sure people know that they matter. I give all of myself and usually get very little in return, but I do it because to lose someone else, to break open with every thought of them–good or bad–I don’t have it in me.

My beautiful boy. You will never be 35.

I tell myself to keep plodding through the different paths my life will take me. I do it for the little girl I never got to be. I do it for her.

Myself.

All this time I thought I was doing it for everyone else. Because I had to stay strong, be strong for them. Be the one people could rely on even when I was broken and battered by the hurricanes of my mental illness.

To say I miss you is to be cheap with words and you deserve more. I hope the sun shines on your face now, and that the pain you felt while here is more a memory almost forgotten.

You will never be forgotten, my sweetest friend.

Salisbury.Fake Life, Uncategorized, writing

Poem I Wrote for a Boy, But Now Give to a Man

I never told you,
but when the sky is blue–
the kind you find on marshmallows
in Lucky Charms–
I have to take a picture with my eyes
and imagine you can see me.

You know,
I never said this when you were here,
but you made life breathable again.
It’s gotten hard to breathe
and I don’t know what to do.

I read recently that nostalgia lies to us about the people who’ve died. How we spend so much time remembering the good about them, and not really thinking about all the ways they’re awful. And it made me wonder, well what’s wrong with that? Why do I need to remember the ways a person hurt me when I want to be happy with the memories of them that bring me joy? I’m not offering them sainthoods in their next life, I’m offering myself respite from the grief of loss.

I’m fine, really. This week’s post is a poem I wrote back in 2013 and it was originally for my friend Robbie, but as I read it, I thought of Henry. It’s almost unfair how much of my creative processes get devoted to him, but if he’s been the reason I still write, or paint, or give light to the world, I don’t think that’s wrong.

Salisbury.Fake Uncategorized

Dear Henry

It’s been a bit since I’ve written to you. It’s not that I don’t want to. I could write to you every day, probably. I get stuck when I try to, though, because I don’t know what to say to you. I love you and miss you aren’t enough for how I feel without you. I’ve tried to find something to fix the planks your death tore off my walls and I’ve been doing a terrible patch job. Crushes on celebrities, falling for a married man (that was weird, you would have laughed at me, but not rudely). I haven’t written poetry much either. Because you won’t read it. I usually wrote it for you anyway. Not that it was about you. I knew you’d read it and that made me feel seen.

You saw me, Henry. You saw me for who I am without wondering what the mess was around me. Maybe I wasn’t messy to you, I don’t know. What I do know is there will never be anyone who comes close to you. How do you love someone when you’ve already loved and lost your soulmate? I know, you’d find that rather silly and call me a silly girl, but I’d be your silly girl.

My therapist (you’d like her, she’s great) told me the love would just be different, it wouldn’t be less or more, it’d just be different and she’s right (she usually is). She’s right. But I still can’t read your letters without becoming a sobbing mess. I tried to today. I really did try, but reading your last words to me reminded me I won’t get any more words. And I want them. I want to hear how your writing is going, I want to hear how your brother is doing (I think about him a lot), I want to talk books, history, all the things we talked about when you were here. And I want to hear you love me.

I miss you. On nights when the moon is clear in the sky, I tell myself it’s you saying hi, that you’re all right, that you don’t feel bad anymore. It’s been three years, but when I think about it, it still feels like you died last night and I can’t breathe and I wish I could tell you more, but I can’t. I wish it didn’t make me sad, I know you wouldn’t like knowing this makes me sad, but it does and I just want to be your Carla again.

I love you.