Dear Blake, I'm Mad At You.

 Dear Blake, I'm Mad At You.

Dear Blake,

We are coming up on the year anniversary of your passing. Time really has no meaning, because I swear you passed just yesterday, three weeks ago, and ten years ago, all at once. 

I've been feeling flat-out stuck. I ran the gauntlet, from my birthday, Thanksgiving, your birthday, Christmas, New Year's, and then threw in a little "20th anniversary of my dad's passing," for good measure. 

Basically, I'm down for anything to budge the stuck-ness, so I found myself at something you'd made fun of- a group breathwork session. The scene looks like something you'd find in a cult documentary, but I gotta say, laying there, breathing, rocking my legs back and forth, with my hands in a sort of prayer position on my forehead (no idea how or why I'd gotten into that position), absolutely SOBBING, full on ugly crying, tears running down my face, something inside me broke and rang out: I'm mad at you.

The Witness: The Rolling Waves of Death

 The Witness: The Rolling Waves of Death

TW: Death, dying

Everyone's heard that grief comes in waves.

Sometimes it comes as a small nudge, surf breaking over shore, a small reminder that it was Blake who usually did this chore, or skipping the ice cream aisle entirely, because there's no one at home to eat it all, reaching for my phone before I realize there's no one on the other end to appreciate my observation.

Other times, it's a riptide. It comes out of nowhere, dragging me under, leaving me gasping for breath. And as any good Floridian knows, fighting it will only result in drowning.

The nudges are constant, gentle saltwater lapping over my feet and ankles, sometimes covering my shins or splashing up to my knees. Sometimes surprising, constant, but tolerable.

The latest riptide came in pieces.