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I don’t know the best place to start, and it’s certainly not the beginning, so we’re going to grab a random thread and hold on for dear life. 

To which I can tell you is about how I approach my whole life – grab that glowing thread that calls to you like fire searing your soul and setting it alight with a possession you didn’t remember you were capable of and don’t let go until there’s nothing left of you or it to hold on to. 

Is this healthy? Probably not. Will that stop me? Also probably not. When your will to live has been broken for your entire life, you grab on to anything that gives you meaning, however long it lasts. When you live for incandescence because the alternative is infinite darkness, you chase the glowing filaments – even if you know that they are only there briefly, and only because you observe them – even, and possibly especially, because you know that the only reason they are string is because your observation condensed them into string form from wave field. At least then, at least in that circumstance, you know your existence matters.

And having said that, someone briefly this week looked at me the way Steve once did – like magic incarnate standing in front of them –  and my heart has not stopped breaking since from the memory. I needed this breaking – I had been burying and repressing out of habit and survival, and to allow the grief unimpeded to surface easily was needed. I found myself weeping in the grocery store parking lot, finally, something long overdue. I have allowed myself finally to grieve without shutting it down. I don’t know if you understand how much you learn to repress and set aside your own Self and experience of your day to day life when you are caring for someone who is dying that you love more than you love yourself – it is absolute. You stop existing beyond your love of them. (And even now, silent sobbing scream for the loss and not being able to save them.) It is the only way a human psyche survives that kind of loss in the context of the Western Medical Paradigm when you are dealing with Insurance Companies and Cancer and Death, and I am not going to pretend that I am not going to carry a burning hatred for the system as it existed at the time of his death, because if I knew how to incinerate it, I would not hesitate, collateral damage be damned. If I was not so focused on working to ensure the basic needs of my kids and myself were met, I likely would be embarking upon a crusade against the insurance and US medical system, and this, my friends, is how they keep profiting off of us while letting those we love die.

Or maybe I have, but it’s so quiet they won’t ever notice until it’s too late. I guess we’ll find out, won’t we?

Steve used to worry that I was too radical and too open and too vulnerable than was good for business and my reputation, and he also worried about my becoming an alcoholic, because he knew how much I hurt every day and that nothing much helped and kept me stable other than loving him. He probably knew somehow he was the only thing saving me from myself in those circumstances, but sometimes I wonder if maybe he was just the dam holding the river back before it flooded the plains that it was mean to run free through. Not that I like that the only thing that stops the back to back adrenaline surges on difficult days is drinking – yet,  I like the idea of daily prescription medications less, because the consequences of those has been brutal at best. I’ve done both extensively, and now, after his death, I trust the medical system less than I already did – which was low on a good day.

If it was anyone else, I’d be horribly worried. Because it’s me, I just make sure to keep open lines of communication between my closest friends. 

I am magic and genius incarnate, you see, and I know it now. I took me almost 40 years and losing someone who saw it and loved me for it, but I know it now. 

I know it now. And soon, so will everyone else.