Two years, and two days

I've spent the last two days trying to find the words to write. As usual, the more you force it, the harder it is. I'm still not sure what I want to say that I haven't said before. I still can't believe that it's been two years. This day hurts the most. Holidays are bittersweet, but there's so much else going on that it's easy not to focus completely on missing Emily. I miss her on her birthday, but quite frankly she drove me so crazy with her incessant obsessing about her birthday that ignoring the day is not a new concept for me. But the first of April? All I could do was think about her. Sometimes it was a happy memory, but mostly I just missed her. So much has happened in the last two years, and it's still hard to wrap my mind around the fact that it is happening without her. And it still breaks my heart when I go a few days without thinking about her. When I can't remember what her voice sounds like, or the way her eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled, or the way she'd pretend to play the role of the "dumb blonde" even though all of us saw right through the act, but we went along with it because she was Emily and she was cute.

Damn, I miss her.

I don't like growing up without her. I'm going to be 27 in two days. I can just imagine the cracks about how I'm getting close to 30, and it makes me want to cry. She'll forever be 20 in my mind, and I just wonder what she would have been like at 23. And when I'm 34 what she would have been like turning 30. I wonder if we would have become closer by then. Sometimes I fear that we might not have ever worked things out. It's the open-ended wonderings that keep me up at night.

Last year was not a good year for me. I spent most of it sunk in a depression up to my eyeballs and doing my best to hide it from everyone I love. When I see my scars, I see Emily. Sometimes that's a comfort. Sometimes it makes me furious that I allowed myself to fall into that kind of coping situation. I want to blame her, because it's easier than blaming myself. I'm furious at her one moment, and miss her so much the next I can't breathe. I go a few days without thinking about her and sometimes it's a relief to forget.

This year I think I've finally started to figure out who I am. Who I am without Emily, and yet who I am with the memory of her still with me. I find that I look at things with a different perspective than I would have before. I value and cherish my friendships and relationships more, even if I'm still learning how to show it. I've been overwhelmingly blessed with friendships through a blog that I probably never would have started. I've realized that while moving away was one of the best things I've ever done, you can't run away from the memories completely. I've found in Lauren a different kind of sisterhood that's helped to heal the broken spots that I thought were beyond repair. I've learned that no matter how often I yell and scream at God, He still hasn't given up on me. And it's sinking in that He never will.

I'm not the same broken person I was this time a year ago. But yet I know I'll never be truly whole, because there will always be a broken piece that is my sister.

And I'm learning to be okay with carrying that brokenness. I've finally realized it can't be fixed. So instead I heal around it, face the broken part when I need to, and build around it instead of over it. And I carry her with me, because she's part of me.

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)
i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear;
and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)
i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart) ~ee cummings