Simple as it should be

I love this face. and I miss it.

He looks so happy here. Carefree and light. The boy I fell in love with. I almost don't remember him like this, but everyday I remember it a little more.

People ask me if I have any romance in my life. I was talking to a friend about this, and she said "You do have a love interest. He happens to have died, but he is still your love interest". Yes, he is.

I was always so worried about him and his health. Any little stomachache would have me in a tailspin, worrying his cancer was back, or his immune system was still messed up. My greatest fear was his death. I would cry just thinking about it. Now is is a reality in my life, in a way that I never would have imagined. How does life stray so far from the way we picture it?

Last night I spent time with dear friends, and we started talking about how much I have changed in 2 years. I am not sure that I would recognize that self walking down the street. I think of things that I did and things that I let happen and I am stunned. At the time of intense change, I couldn't imagine things being better. Yet here I am, thankful that those things have changed. I am sure that that story would have also been beautiful, but I would never have learned the things I learned and become the person that I am today. Someone who is more sure of herself than ever. Someone who won't be put aside and told she is not good enough. Someone who doesn't straighten her hair everyday and rides a bike in a skirt. Who prefers gardens over bars and beer over martinis.

I don't know what I was trying to say in this post. I started with a picture and here we are, miles from where I thought I would be. Seems about right.

Carrie sent me this saying that she thought fit me. I love it, and want to have it letterpressed and hung in my house, over my bed. It is this:

fluctuat nec mergitur
"Tossed by the waves, she does not sink."

then she said that she wished my tossing were more like surfing! I have always wanted to surf...

February 3, 2008

Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, or driving, even sitting listening to live music, I will be overwhelmed by a sadness so deep and sudden that is as though someone has knocked the breath out of me. I look around, thinking that someone could have seen it coming and warned me. Alas, it is just me and my sadness. I want to scream "How can you just be sitting there as if nothing just happened?!" It is in those moments that I feel profoundly alone.

That is the thing with pain. We can help each other carry it and share it, but no one can truly understand our pain. No one can really understand why seeing my halloween mugs makes break me down and cry everytime. Or that, at least once a week, I see a truck that looks like Scott's and I honk and wave, before realizing that he is not in that truck and I will never again see him driving.

It is in our pain that we are most alone here. We can't count on anyone to be able to speak into it, into our broken hearts. There's only one person who can do that. When I am feeling my weakest and most alone, I really feel Jesus saying "I know, this is hard and it is so broken. I am weeping with you". And I really believe that he is. As much as I yell and sob to him, demanding to know why, why this happened, I deep down know that he is as sad as I am. It turns it from an overwhelming 'I can't breath' sadness to a peaceful sadness that I know is temporary and understood. Almost beautiful.

Thank God for that.

Diary Entry

Dear God,
I am mad at you. You know why.

Elisa

I deleted this post. It felt too personal to put out for the world to see.