journal entries during grief.
january 9th.
there are fires blazing through the county. i worry that the earth is struggling. i want her to be ok. i just don’t know how to help. it is hard to not be stagnant when you are so small and the universe is so big.
9. january 9th.
in seven years
my skin will regenerate and
i won’t be able to bear that day
for the memories will live on forever in the back of my mind but your cells will be scoured off of mine and my skin will not remember your touch.
i am scared.
i never want to forget your voice. or your laugh.
10. january 10th.
i have not slept this much in years. i sleep in until 11 am every day. that used to be impossible. i like to be in my subconscious because we can still talk and be together in another universe while my eyelids flutter and i smile in earnest.
11. january 11th.
i hiked to the same spot, the spot i’d talked to the trees about you 8 days ago. before i knew. they were very still, and i was silent. i had nothing else to say. and then i saw the sky light up and had this intense revelation that made me burst into tears. I’ve been consoling myself in knowing this is not the end. we are going to meet again. but i realized - your body is here. will you still look like you when we meet again? will you even recognize me? what if you don’t? what if i don’t recognize you? no, i would, i would. but my selfish and shallow heart is sad that you won’t look the same. i hope you will take us back to the moment we first met, under the stars and surrounded by trees. we were both so beautiful in that moment. i hope we look that way when we see each other. do our bodies in some form go with our souls when we die? can we choose the exact point in our life in which we looked a certain way, and emulate that in our spiritual form that now exists in the heavens? can we hold onto our beautiful bodies in some form, even just to encapsulate our even more beautiful souls? can we choose to carry on the same home that housed our spirits on earth when we are in heaven? i sobbed and my body weakened and melted there at the peak of a santa barbara mountain and wailed unapologetically. passersby saw me and looked at me as if i was mentally unstable. and i kept weeping, because i couldn’t bear the idea of us not meeting again the way we met the first time. beautiful and young and so full of the glow of our youths.