callie

Some things change everything. She was something. And everything. The last few days have felt a lot like this:

I don't want to think about the 7th This one will be easier. This one feels harder. I don't know what to say. I want to say everything. I want to say nothing. I always say the same thing. I don't want to say anything. I have to say something. I laid awake in bed the other night, rereading words I've written on past occasions. Trying to write a new set of words that could change something. Change what? My heart? Who knows. My grief for her is permanent. It is ever changing but constant. I carry it with me as a part of who I am. I miss her in everything I do. Sometimes unconsciously, and in small ways, but always. good + bad. There are still moments that take my breath away. Time has healed me but I will never fully heal. I have never been able to write about our friendship publicly before this until now. My feelings of her loss, yes. But her, no. Mostly because anyone who knew me, who knew her, who knew us - knew it was indescribable. It felt like if I tried to sum her up into a paragraph of words then that was all she was. For me that was too final. Too definitive, too limited. There will never be a way to describe it exactly as it was so I never even tried to begin. Maybe it was too painful. Maybe it still is. There is no one like her. I look for her in people and places she can't be. It makes me angry, sometimes infuriated, mostly exhausted and broken at the thought that I lost the truest and best friend of my entire life. I am devastated for reasons both selfish and earthly -I want her here with me but also because her life was cut so short. She was the other half of me - the better part - the most loyal kindred spirit and soul I will ever have known. She inspired me and understood me. She was hard on me and honest with me. She was my friend soul mate , my twin. She was my everyday and I lost her tragically, traumatically, suddenly - during one of the most significant and impactful time of our lives. She was beautiful and smart and kind, a good daughter, a good Christian, a loving sister, the truest friend. I loved her. I will always love her. For so long I have felt the need to write perfectly about her. I want to get these feelings I have out of me and into something tangible. My grief feels locked in a box, dying to be understood. I believe that I understand it but still I feel misunderstood. Such is grief. Four years have passed and it has only gotten harder for me to express my feelings about her loss. In many ways I feel like I am not entitled to the same bereavement as someone who lost their child, their parent or their significant other. I know now that is an impossible subject. I know that grief is not a competition. All of these things I know - even So I feel wrong, strange, embarrassed almost, to write that yet - STILL - there are days [mostly nights] when I miss her so bad that it feels excruciating, consumingly excruciating and that's the only word I can come up with to describe how badly I still ache. I feel frustrated and confused that I still have these emotions until God reminds me that I feel this way because it was real. She was real. Our friendship and our bond were real, our memories. Her life. It was all real. Life without Callie has been beautiful. I used to feel like that was a betrayal to say. She would smile at me for this progress. So much of my life has happened without her it feels impossible that I could be both so happy and sad. But I have found it easiest to stop trying to make sense of that and accept the miraculousness of the human heart. I have simultaneously lived moments that I have never been happier in while still - my heart misses her through them. The biggest, most eventful and joyful days of my life have been experienced since she's been gone. Such a complicated and confusing emotion for a grieving but thriving heart. - and that is why I have found it most comforting to leave my words at this: life w i t h and w i t h o u t her is impossible to sum up || except that is has been beautiful and painful, heart aching and wonderful all at the same time. And I am so thankful for all of it. I know that in some other life, we are standing side by side - laughing that, in some other life- we are apart. And I know I will see her again one day. I know that for sure.