bittersweet

i am not gonna lie. yesterday was a really bittersweet day for me. it has been for quite some time now. when i was younger, i was always so elated when it came,  because it marked another year that i had spent journaling. i remember how much joy i took in recording the events of each day and my observations on what i had seen. i was still a child (kind of) when i started my "long long letter to myself" on september the ninth in 1986. i was eleven years old and i finally felt like i needed to put something into words, but not into words spoken and forgotten, but indelible, on a page, with ink. i never once journaled in pencil. i wanted to play for keeps when i wrote something down. i swore to me honest with myself when i committed words to paper; to tell it like i see it, like i feel it, the way that i experience it. i admit that there were times when i would write certain events on loose leaves of paper, only to throw them away, or dip them in water so as to be unwritten,or burn them later when i tired of carrying the past around with me. there were times when i omitted everything for months by these methods, but i could never actually stop writing. once a friend told me that i wrote habitually. the truth is that i write compulsively, the way that i once painted, or played guitar and sang. those things eventually got pushed back until i had no time to do them for myself anymore. writing, on the other hand, has stayed constant. it has, without a doubt, made a huge impact on my development as a human being. 

 so on september ninth, i would celebrate my journal's birthday, almost like my own personal anniversary with writing. 
 
  however, 13 years ago, i stopped being elated when this date came into view, because it was the day that we lost Gabe. it still doesn't feel like 13 years have passed since i spoke with him. he was my twin soul, my brother, my other half. he had half the people that we knew thinking that we were blood related siblings. he loved so many people- so deeply. he had a way of making each one feel special in their own way. i still have moments when i hear a new song or see something that he would have adored, and i get all the way through the thought in my head "oh Gabe is gonna LOVE this" before i remember that he is gone. it kills me every time. i keep waiting for this magical time (the stuff that they say heals all wounds, what a joke) when i won't feel the lack of my brother. he was one of those lights that shined too bright, i suppose. i am not going to say that he was a saint, or that he didn't (often) land on his face. he had his shortcomings (like everyone else) but he also had this habit of pulling off these amazing feats of grace. it was never some practiced thing - just a leap and whirl, a smile, or a word - it passed so quickly, and you had to swear to god that you had seen it. something flashing and hard to define, something that made you feel blessed to have witnessed it at all. his short life was like that. 
dancing and bumbling, daydreaming and lightning fast changes in direction, and those impossible moments of grace - like nothing you had ever seen before, or since.