Feeling Sentimental Again

As the one year anniversary (and your birthday) draw near, I find myself reflecting on the year that's gone by, the growth I've made, and the sadness that still wakes in your loss.

I find myself thinking about the gang and growing up and spending summers on the beach and all the crap we all dealt with as teenagers, each of us trying to find ourselves and our place in this world. Some of us succeeded and some us failed, picking ourselves up and dusting the failure off of ourselves and taking one more stab at it.

I still can't believe I will never get another phone call from you as you skulked up and down Military Hwy, slurping on a Slurpee and bitching about 7-11 not having your favorite flavor.

I just can't, I don't know...accept it..believe it...I mean I can...I know you're gone, but sometimes I still wait to hear from you...and I just know that I won't, not anymore.

I was watching Army Wives last night, and two of the characters were talking about their husband's deploying, and Roxie (a character) said she doesn't know how the other wives get used to it, to which Claudia Joy promptly responds, "we never get used to it, we just get through it."

Life is like that, I guess. Things happen, bad things, things you think you can never get past or used to, and eventually we learn to just get through it. There's a big difference there, between getting used to something and just getting through it. 

Take lima beans for example. My mom and dad love them, used to make them for dinner all the time. I gag just thinking about them. I never got used to eating them, I just got through it (usually with the help of some delicious, lima bean flavor masking mashed potatoes). 

The loss of a loved one, or a friend, even a beloved pet, is something you never get used to. You will wake up every morning for the rest of your life and wish you could talk to them just one last time. But deep down you know you'll never get that chance, so eventually you learn to take the hard days one breath at a time, and hope that eventually, at some point, the next breath will be just a little less painful, or that your heart will eventually grow just a little bit more numb. 

I don't know that, that makes sense to any one other than me....sometimes it hurts and you want to rage and scream and yell..and sometimes, the pain takes a backseat; it still hurts, but its no where nearly as bad as other days.