I'm going "inland" this weekend to visit the family. My little cousin just graduated high school last week and so they're having a get together for her. I haven't seen most of this side of the family in almost four years. I don't think that most of them ever knew about James except for vaguely. I'm glad of that. I don't want anyone to mention it. I want to sit back and enjoy the afternoon with Mom and Poppa (my grandfather). Hopefully being around a bunch of 18 year olds will put some energy back in my step and remind me that I'm still young. There's so much to look forward to on your high school graduation!

Just like there's so much to look forward to after graduating university ...

I really have to get off my ass and get out there again. I don't have to be fixed to go back into the world. I have to go back into the world in order to be fixed!

Oh, Careen, get a move on already.

-Careen

Chinkzilla asked "Would you trade lives with me?" When James first died I felt nothing but envy for other young couples at the beach, the grocery store, the movie theater. I was even envious of the seventeen year old couples at my younger cousin's high school graduation. I'm sure that a large proportion of the couples I run into won't spend their lives together, but at least they have the chance to. I hated them for it. Certainly losing James was losing a future and a possible course of action. For months I have been struggling with the idea of who I am without him. I'm sure if you had asked me two weeks ago, "Would you trade your life for somebody else's?" I would've seriously considered it.

I don't like the turn that my life has taken. I feel that James' death has taken a lot out of me and the thought of going on makes me feel tired and depressed. To be sure, I would love to live a life without this loss and without this uncertainty. But now when I think about it, I would never trade my life for anybody else's. I have never been a religious person or the kind to leave everything to fate. I'm not exactly sure what I believe, but I suppose that the root of me believes that everything happens to every individual for a reason. Or maybe I just believe that every individual can find reason in the things that happen to them. I am standing at the threshold of a new life that is very different from the one I had imagined. I know that I have to learn from everything that has happened to me in the past six months. I have to live this life if I am going to live any life at all. This is the life that I have been given and I can't exchange it ... nor do I want to. Some people go into space. Some people go to the office. Wherever you go, there you are. What does it REALLY mean to trade your life for somebody else's? I think it means far more than trading circumstances.

-Careen

I first heard of xanga years ago but had never even thought to join until now. Until now, I had nothing that I wanted to share with the world because I felt as though my life was too "normal" to be of any interest to anybody. I took all of my days for granted and never bothered to write a single one. Only now am I beginning to realize the liquidity of our memories and how quickly we lose them forever. I wish that I hadn't been so foolish and that I had taken the time to write down thoughts and memories. Sitting here now, I am beginning to realize that the insignificant things, the little things that I have not bothered to remember, are the things that I long for most today.

On April 16, 2008, my lover and best friend passed away suddenly in a car accident. I had been with him for two years and was seriously considering the prospect of spending the rest of my life with him. Our romance began as a simple friendship and it was only after several months that we slowly blossomed into lovers. He added such richness to my life that I have felt poor since he died. He was my soul mate. My best friend. He was a safe place to land. He was an adventure. I still don't understand how I've made it this far without him.

When James first died, I wandered about my life in a state of shock. At his funeral, I stood awkwardly beside his mother who insisted that I be treated as a part of the immediate family but I didn't feel anything. I stared at his casket and to my way of thinking it was empty. I was at a loss, I knew that I was heartbroken, but the feeling held back until the general excitement was over. I received condolences and grief counseling with grace and everybody complimented me on how 'put-together' I was. "You must be a saving grace to Lynn," family friends said in low voices, as they glanced nervously at James' mother who stood bleary-eyed in the corner. I would nod at them and they would give me some reassuring word before walking away to sympathize with somebody else.

I stayed with James' family for a week after the funeral because Lynn was, in fact, a mess. His younger brother Drew had to go back to school in Pennsylvania and couldn't take care of her. James Senior walked about in a stupor very much like my own, and although he was functioning, he wasn't of much help to Lynn.

I don't know why I am going into detail. Remembering those few weeks brings back so much sadness, and really, it's not important. We all survived the weeks after James' death. I washed sink loads of dishes and did laundry for people that, really, when I think about it, were strangers to me. I spent long nights on the sofa with Lynn, petting her head as she cried on my shoulder. I spent afternoons in the garden, listening to her scream at God in the bedroom above, trying to pretend that I couldn't hear anything. All the while, my own emotions lay dormant.

A week after the funeral, I got into my car and started my hour and a half journey back home, to the apartment where James and I had so recently moved in together. It was then that everything hit me. As I entered the familiar streets of our new neighborhood, the tears came swiftly and without introduction. No introduction was necessary, I had known that they were coming for a long time. I had wondered for several days why they were so late. Once the sadness began, it could not be stopped. The numbness was gone forever and I realized then, that the pain had set in for good. I cried all the way to the apartment, and through the front door. I cried through my dinner and until I fell asleep. The next morning the cycle of tears began afresh.

Since then, I have learned to cry less, but I have not learned how to rid myself of the pain of his loss. It lingers with me like a shadow, dark and elongated, always at my feet and within my sight. Sometimes I believe that I am starting to put it behind me, but with a change of direction, everything is once again in front of me. And it is in quiet moments, like this one, that I realize just how far I haven't come; just how long this journey will be.

In short, I am keeping this journal in hopes that I can work my way through this heartache. I don't expect it to die, but I hope that by keeping this journal, I will at least be able to survive and perhaps even thrive in the end. Every morning I wake and feel his presence. Every night I dream that he is with me, but now the dreams are changing and even in sleep, I know that his touch is not real, that he is gone from me forever.

I cannot bring James back to the world of the living but I still hope that, one day, I might be able to return there myself.

-Careen