This Time Last Year

After seeing a friend post a picture using an app called "Timehop," I decided to download it. The app syncs with your phone's photo gallery, Instagram, and Facebook accounts to show you pictures that were taken on each date years prior.

Every morning I've been opening the app with both anticipation and dread. The pictures that it's found from seven, five, or three years ago have been making me laugh. It's given me the opportunity to relive high school graduation parties, college, studying abroad, and everything in between. But the pictures from one year ago have been the most interesting for me to see. As the days get closer to May 28th I am constantly reminded that it's almost been an entire year since Blake has been in our lives.

More so than ever before, I find myself starting sentences in my mind with "This time last year..." as I recall so many lasts:

This time last year Blake and I went to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium and had one of the best days of my entire life.

This time last year I dropped him off at the San Jose Airport for the last time.

This time last year I took off two days of work so I could spend an entire week with Blake for Memorial Day Weekend.

This time last year...

This time last year...

Although the nostalgia has been somewhat upsetting, I've been surprised by how okay I feel. It's almost scary how detached I am from the memories of this time last year that the app places on my screen. I look at the pictures with love and fondness, but it feels kind of like I'm looking at people I knew a long time ago. The couple looks vaguely familiar, as if they were my close friends from another lifetime.

As the days of reminiscing have gone on, I've started to believe that this feeling of loving detachment comes from the fact that this time last year, I was a different person. Maybe the reason why the couple looks like people I knew in another lifetime is because it really was another lifetime. Maybe life as I knew it has finally started to come to a close and a new life has started to begin.

It's new and scary and a bit uncomfortable, but I finally feel like I'm ready. 

It's May and I'm Terrified

I'm terrified of May. I'm terrified of the 28th. 

I'm terrified of spending the entire month being terrified of May 28th. 

I have plenty of distractions between now and then (finals, Cape Cod, my sister's graduation), but when I give myself even a second to pause between planning for any of those three things, May 28th pours down on me from a dark cloud.

May 28th. 

May 28th. 

May 28th. 

I'm drenched in May 28th. Soaked to the bone in its significance.

I've been told that the days leading up to an anniversary are often harder than the date itself. The waiting, anticipating, and dreading build up and turn a harmless number on the calendar into a black hole. The line that separates the 27th and 28th somehow becomes a cliff. Reaching the end of one day means stepping off into...

Nothing.

Nothing horrible will happen on May 28th.

I'm making May 28th into the black hole I thought September 21st (his birthday) would be or that I thought November 23rd (our anniversary) would be. But on each of those days I crossed from one number on the calendar to the next the same way I did every other day of the year. There was no black hole waiting for me on the other side of the line.

But even knowing this doesn't stop me from being terrified.
I'm terrified of May. I'm terrified of the 28th.

The Hole

It's not like I ever forget that Blake died. In fact, I don't think there has been a whole hour since he passed away that something hasn't made me think of him. I'm constantly getting reminders: a song, a phrase, an article of clothing, a place we went or wanted to go... anything, really. And when this happens, I quietly acknowledge the trigger, find him in my heart, say hi, and go about my day.

But every once in a while, something bigger happens and the quiet acknowledgment isn't enough. It's like my body remembers it has a hole it in, right at the center of my heart. What a weird sensation to be able to physically feel something that is seemingly just emotional. But I feel it. I feel it so much that the only thing I can do is stop everything and write.

This morning I received an email from an old classmate of Blake. He described going on Facebook for the first time in a long time just to check up on friends. To his complete surprise, he saw that the smiley, popular guy with a "sensational presence" that he remembered from high school had passed away. He went on to detail his interactions with Blake and why he was such a great guy. He said the usual "I can't imagine what you're going though" and of course sent me "love and prayers."

There have been numerous messages like this throughout the past 11 months, but for some reason this one hit me really hard. I think it was because his shock in finding out for the first time made me remember how truly soul shattering it was for me to find out for the first time. Nothing can prepare you for someone telling you that a person you love- that you are IN love with- is gone. Nothing. You go silent, you ask questions, you deny it, you cry, you gasp for air, you scream, you do a lot of things, but you never forget. And from that point on, there will be a hole in your heart. A hole that will physically hurt when you are reminded.

But somehow through writing, I get the pain to subside. It doesn't fill the hole up or make it go away, but it focuses the hurt and channels it into something clearer, comprehensible... beautiful, even. And that's a metaphor for how I've been trying to live my life since that moment. From that soul shattering moment when I found out that Blake died, to the tiny daily reminders, to the even bigger triggers, every day I attempt to make the pain make sense. I try to use that hole to create a life lovelier than I could've ever imagined.