33

Babes,

Tomorrow is your birthday. You would have been 33 years old this year, but instead, you are forever frozen at 29. Every July 20th, since your death has been hard only in different ways. This year I've noticed a heartbreaking thing. No one talks about you anymore. Well, since I moved away to a place where no one had ever met you, no one else ever spoke of you, but I spoke of you constantly. Considering most of the stories I had from the ten years prior started with Rene and I. Also I was still sorting out me without you and sometimes couldn't help myself but talk about you, about us. I didn't care how it looked or came across me speaking of my late fiancé; I couldn't have stopped myself from speaking of you even if I had tried. Only that too, has changed. I have made new memories over the last nearly four years, and so even I say your name so much less. Plus it has been a length of time now since your death and our life together where many people do not know me with you. They don't know me as having ever had you, or our story. They just know me as I am now. So saying Rene and I,  is opening myself up to a story I am often not willing to tell.

This year this birthday I'm grieving this next stage. I feel like a child having a temper tantrum over something no one else can see. It’s so important to them and yet everyone around goes about as if there is nothing to be seen. I left our home town to gain anonymity and a fresh start and it was for the best. But in moments like this I feel alone not having others who knew and loved you to share stories with. The lack of hearing your name, or saying it. I'm sure at home people will still cheers to you tomorrow, but I have a feeling even at home your name comes up less. It's not that we love you any less or miss you any less. I guess it's just the years that have come since you died and the life liven since gets referenced more and more.

So your birthday has been coming, and it's breaking my heart that there are no parties being planned. No celebration to look forward to, just a painful reminder that you are gone. And in my best moments, I can be poetic about it and be happy for the years you lived and the times we shared. I can see the bigger picture of life and death and be at peace with it all. In other moments I'm still heartbroken and mad. I get so angry, and I know that my frustration is only covering an unbearable pain that still breaks through.

I miss my best friend. Your birthday matters to me, your life matters to me and our time together will forever have shaped who I am and for that I will always be thankful. 

Tomorrow I will try to celebrate the life you lived while grieving the loss that came with that. Since the pain of your death will not be denied. No matter how much I talk myself around it, my body holds the heartbreak, and it knows. It knows that all the 'everything happens for a reason, and he's in a better place, or he'd want you to be happy' sounds nice but fall flat on a broken heart and wounded soul. I cannot fool myself out of feeling your loss.

I miss you. I miss reminiscing about all the life we had lived. I kinda believe that the day you died is your birthday now. Wherever you are you arrived there August 16th making July 20th probably meaningless to you now. But it is etched into me as a day we celebrated you. There won’t be helicopter rides, or skydiving, there won’t be boat trips across the valley for a dinner, there won’t be an all night bender or a week long birthday party, but in your name, rye and gingers and a trip down memory lane will get us through to next year.

Sending you my love

Xoxo