"there is honey in the lion, i can't slay it."

i'm pathetic, and i know it. i write letters to dead people. but it helps.

i'm never rid of anything in my life. when i say i'm a sentimental packrat, i mean it in every sense of those two words. whether i lose the meaning behind the object matters not, but it ends up amidst the clutter anyway. careful, there's glass in there, don't cut yourself.

things just stay with me. maybe it's human nature, but if that's the case, then why do i constantly talk to people who are definitely human, but can let go of things easier? if things take time, then how much? by the time the memories i want to let go of have drifted off into the wind as dust, i will, myself, be eroded. smooth edges with a surprisingly callused surface. but i'm no rock. i'm nobody's rock. i drift just as easily on the breeze.

you're the first person i've ever lost who's been so close to me, or at least, whom i've kept this close. way back, when i was more selfish and weird than i am now, i always had these visions of what would happen if someone close to me died. i think half of it was to wonder how much pity everyone would have for me, but the other half shocked me as my nose would sting and my face would contort and the tears would slowly come.

when i heard about the accident, i really, honestly, thought you would pull through. the thought that you could lose was hard to think about, because it seemed so impossible. of all the mortals i've ever encountered, you struck me as the most invincible. i'd wondered if i cursed you by thinking the things i'd thought before, and i prayed harder than i ever had in my entire damn life, harder even than when i was twelve years old and first accepted a savior. there were so many praying for you, but everything was set in motion already...and that's strange, because you didn't move the entire time. which was hard to imagine; even sitting down or standing still, you were always in motion.

i'd received a text the night before, walking to my car after a closing shift, asking if it was true that you had died. i replied hastily, denying it, but i checked your father's blog just in case. i wasn't happy to see that you weren't doing as well as before, but there are stories of strength, and then there are miracles, and i knew...i just knew that you had to recover. i knew that you had to wake up. people don't die from car accidents. it could've been worse: you weren't drunk, nobody else hit you, you were bound to pull through. you had to wake up. you were invincible, and immortals wake up.

i woke up the next morning to gifts from my family and multiple hugs from my mother. she went to take care of her horse. i went back to my room. i wondered if the overcast sky would give and let us have some rain. i turned on my phone. another message. "...i'm so sorry." more rumors, i thought. a hurried rush to my computer, wondering why it didn't load faster than it already did.

the enormous weight that, at that moment in time, pulled the lump in my esophagus down to settle in my chest and hurt me, sank further when i kept getting calls. they were intended to be calls of joy, of wishing me happiness for the year to come, but they wound up being calls of sympathy by the end of each conversation.

the weight has remained there, i guess. it's the heaviest object, at the bottom of the pile, covered by debris, but it's never invisible to me. it never will be. i won't ever know why you had to leave, but if anything, i like to think i'm a little stronger for dealing with it. had my feelings never tended towards you in the first place, i'd merely be sympathetic and offer my condolences with a grim face.

i hang on to every tidbit from every experience. tillman says it best. there is always something sweet lying in the belly of the beast, and i am always wont to reach into the yawning jaw to get it, to feel it again, to remember it. i don't trust the lion not to clamp its teeth on my knowing limb, but i reach for it anyway. in some ways, remembering the good things can be good, but for me, there are some stories that have no happy endings, because they all run in circles--with the good comes the bad, with the fond joy comes the pain, i have never been able to separate the two to save my physical life. there have been some lost limbs. it's been a bloody mess, but i've at least learned to bite my lip and bear it, because i don't want anyone else cleaning it up but me. if someone else comes and does my work for me, they might take pity on me and try and suture my wounds. as unhealthy as it sounds, i don't want any stitches. not yet.

damn it all. i miss you so much. you never considred me that close to you, i guess, and i miss you as if you did. as if you valued my friendship as much as i did yours. i'll never know.

hello. goodbye. never honey without the vinegar.

-d