it's the day for lovers!!!! i spent my morning looking through my camera roll, surely there was a couple memories of the year so far, but the quiet was a dark emptiness i had to swim through. if life ebbs and flows, i am ebbing, most painfully. im desperate to call something from god, you know when a puzzle fits so perfect, you're aback in awe at the miracle, you think, im here for a reason and it's for this moment. everything i own has the claw marks from a scorned woman who never got her dreams, who declares bitter justice at the hoard. this finale of a decade is ringing every morning, i've walked to the beat of time since i turned 23, never quite felt like ive landed, a tinnitus on my bones, look at how life moves on while im here, ebbing i mean shedding i mean writing about the weight, like loving will do anything to fix it. then again, i slept on the couch with a cat who won't get off me, every time i nudge her, she stares at me until im ready for her to find a spot again. she's not afraid of reaching, no matter how many times i've pushed her off. here she comes, hands gentle, ready to claim her spot, like a perfect fit.

christmas felt different this year but the magic finds a way in, through mom always forgetting at least one present and dad looking at the baby to say he has all the gifts he needs. the magic is in spending christmas eve baking dessert boxes, which took four listens of the Tortured Poets anthology. im nothing if not a tortured poet. there is a hyper awareness of all that's been lost, when I realize I won't get to message her merry christmas like I've done for 15 years, or when I sit to watch the football game and it hits me, this is where daddad would've been. but the light creeps in when we gather around my nanny's room, or when I get the right game for my nephew. how my niece perfectly wraps her presents. when a new friend wishes me a merry christmas. after all this time, with all the space this ache takes up, I'm still shocked when I'm noticed.

moments are so fleeting, sand in my hands, I swear I'm trying to hold on, to savor, but time has never made a friend out of me. in an attempt to remind myself of my growth, I'm on a writing trip to reflect. today, I read my old journals from 2018-2020, this was a difficult phase of different jobs, questions, feeling lost, the weight of time introduced itself then. but it was all in the shadows of this genuine faith that made mole hills out of mountains. I wish I could tell her everything she feared came true. she was right, we didn't find a purpose or a career, we didn't experience romantic love, we didn't become thinly beautiful, or do anything with our theatre degree. every fear that was so debilitating happened - and I have never been happier. I wish she could know that, I grieve for her, I thought I would hate myself as I read the pages, but I love this girl. she was dramatic and sensitive and emotional. she was strange, and also the only reason I am here as I am. no one understands her, but I celebrate her every time I dream, every time I date, every time I say nice things about my body. I am only me because that weird girl was so brave, and I don't hate her, not at all, not one bit.

this year has been loss after loss but i barely feel it when i know what it's like to lose a god. i grab the rope to be pulled to safety and it rips in my hands, and my feet find a ledge to hold me still but the board caves in, so now the water is cold but i have enough experience with ice in my chest so holding my breath isn't much different. but i can't see very well, so maybe if i play dead for some sweet release, my weight will rise to the surface. and now i feel the sun and i am alive but none of it matters when i dont have stable ground to live on. i woke up this morning and my first thought was a prayer, i wish you were real, i said, i can't believe i have to feel sun every day of my life and hold my own body for survival to nowhere. no one warns you of this when the spirit is washed, the prison of your mind, the void is as vast as he was mighty and every other loss is just a broken ledge in comparison.

The lover in me still begs to be chosen with clawed grief, and it's like I've forgotten. As though my friend doesn't cook meals she'd think I'd like, or mom doesn't book a vacation at my favorite spot, or my roommate isn't sensitive to the volume of her music on a saturday morning. As though the men who barely know me at pool didn't give me a giftcard when my daddad passed, and the toughest one there didn't take time during his smoke break to tell me how much better my game has been. you can't quit now, he said, everyone can see it. aching to be noticed as though my sister doesn't listen well when I tell her about the dating scene, as though my baby niece doesn't smile when she sees me. As though love doesn't come in many forms, in the ways I speak about my body, my life, my timeline, with gentleness, with grace, with understanding, patience, perspective, with vulnerability, this is right here, there is no need to grovel on my knees, it's happening, right now, in the older woman who was raving about my tattoo, she lifted my arm, showed her friend, her other friend, her daughter, a random stranger passing by. it's just so neat, she said as her hand touched the words carved in my skin, 'hopeless romantic', it's just so beautiful.