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. 

Thanksgiving / Six Months

The sunlight shocked open my eyelids and pushed me to face the morning. Seven AM wasn't my friend. Perhaps because Four AM and I had grown to know each other so intimately. Four AM was comforting to me in all of his dark and quiet anxiousness. In that time of night, the silent hum of unspoken fears wrapped around me, curious and complicated, moody, but mine. But Seven, she and I had become strangers. Her pesky perkiness was too draining to even acknowledge. "Leave me alone!" I begged, trying to reclaim the darkness of shut eyelids. "Find someone else to force your rise and shine upon. I'm not interested."

But this morning was different. The light had a mission and Seven was unrelenting. As my consciousness took over, snapped into alert, I remembered the significance of this particular dawn. Not only was it Thanksgiving, but also the six month mark of Blake's death. The weight of that realization tugged at my heart, causing me to collapse into the sunlight and embrace my old friend Seven. Today would be too lonely if I isolated myself. "Ok Seven, you win."

These two events coinciding didn't feel like a coincidence. The universe had transpired to lay out this juxtaposition so clearly that it would be impossible to ignore. The national day of thanks and the day that marks half a year without My Love. One with a theme of gratitude, the other: grief. I started asking myself, "How can I respect both feelings without falling too deeply into one or the other? How can mixing the two create a more meaningful day?"

The answer was actually simple: focus on love. The absence of it, the presence of it, the yearning for it, and the hope that it still exists. Love in all of its forms. Love that can be seen and love that can only be felt. Love was both my greatest gift and the deepest hole in my heart. Today, I would focus on love.

My annoying but inspiring friend Seven AM helped me realize that this Thanksgiving, I'm not actually balancing opposite emotions.  On the surface that's what grief and gratitude seem to be, but in actuality, that couldn't be farther from the truth. Because the foundations of both are the exact same thing: love. It's easy to trace gratitude back love, but I had to stretch my mind to come to the conclusion that grief couldn't exist without love either. Love makes gratitude and grief intrinsically linked. The separation of the two only came from my refusal to wake up.

Now, I'm wide awake with my friend Nine AM. He has all the analytical insight of Four, but with the blissful optimism of Seven. At this time of morning, the light is shining bright, but it no longer has to battle against the harsh contrast of nighttime. The sun is welcome to disrupt my sleep because now I want to be awake, enjoying every minute of this day. A day that reminds me of both the past and the present, but more importantly, the love that weaves the two together.

Today, I'm coming from a place of Nine.

The Purple Heart

Before meeting up with Blake's family to spend our anniversary with them, my mom went with me to visit the cemetery. I showed her Blake's grave and excitedly pointed out the blue heart I'd told her about. But right away I noticed that the heart wasn't blue anymore. The blue heart-shaped sea glass that I glued to his headstone had turned this weird, light purple color.

At first I was mad. The heart used to be a gorgeous shade of sapphire blue, just like Blake's birth stone and the little hearts I've been using on all of my posts. I even bought a ring and a necklace to wear that have blue heart stones in honor of that heart. Now that the heart is purple, I felt like all of this perfect symbolism was completely ruined!

My mom was actually smiling about it turning purple. When I asked her why she thought it was a good thing, she explained that she saw symbolism in the new color. My mom pointed out that purple is the color that you get when you mix red and blue together. What was once a deep, red, and passionate love was colored blue by the sorrow and sadness of loss. Maybe the heart turning purple reflected my own heart. Maybe I was finally learning how to combine those two colors to create a new kind of love. Not only romantic love or love in mourning, but a love that is perfectly both at the same time. She left me with those thoughts and retuned to the car to give me alone time with Blake. I kissed the purple heart with a new found respect for it, thanks to my mother's words.

When I woke up this morning, I started thinking about the purple heart again. I loved the explanation my mom gave for it, but felt the urge to dig even deeper.

Suddenly, I knew. A month ago, after reading my post about the symbolism of the blue heart, a woman close to Blake explained to me the spiritual significance of blue. She suggested I look up the seven chakras and their color counterparts.

What I found was that blue means communication and self-expression. Perhaps the blue heart coming to me was a sign to focus of these things. I've tried to do this by connecting with others who are grieving and keeping up with this blog. In the progression of the chakras, the color purple comes after blue. This is a transition into intuition and wisdom, acknowledging perception beyond ordinary sight. Maybe the heart that first came to me as blue was now trying to mirror my progress by transforming to purple.

With the added focus on the spiritual symbolism of purple (along with my mom's explanation of the color), I now feel like my interpretation of the purple heart is whole. My heart doesn't need to be blue anymore because I've learned so much about death, loss, and sadness in general. I've come to understand that I'm connected to every person and every thing, near or far, past or present. I've grown so much through my grief that now I'm able to see the world in a completely different way. A way that acknowledges the limitations of ordinary sight.

To Blake, On Our Anniversary

Blake,
It's weird being in my parents house again. The first couple of times I came home after your death, I refused to step foot here. Without hesitation, I agreed to sleep in the bedroom in your parent's house where you passed away, but was too scared to even see this place, the house where we spent your last week together. But being here has finally started to feel ok. In fact, now that I think about it, this house is actually the perfect place for me to be on our anniversary...

Where I'm laying right now is where I stayed up all night texting with you for the first time. I remember thinking, why is Blake Norvell even texting me? Maybe it's because he feels bad for making me drive him home? Maybe he's just bored? As much as I played it off like I was only mildly interested in you at first, I was so excited that night. I was right here, in this bed, with butterflies in my stomach every time a new text came in.

And there's also the last week we spent here, your very last week on earth. I know it wasn't our most
adventure-filled trip, but it was actually nice playing house here with you while my parents were gone. We got groceries, watched movies, took care of my dog, floated in the pool, and most importantly, got to wake up and fall asleep with each other every day. That's still the hardest part, you know. I still haven't gotten used to reaching over and feeling nothing but empty space.

One year. We talked about our one year anniversary all the time for some reason. I don't know why it always seemed so significant, but we even had the presents picked out that we were going to buy each other for this day. Why did we do that? That's actually really weird haha. But milestones were important to you and that made them important to me too. Which is why I want to make sure that today is filled with as much love as I can cram into it.

I watched our videos for the past hour or so. Every single one. I know I gave you a hard time when you would insist on taking them, but now all I want to do is thank you. If I could go back in time and agree to them enthusiastically, I would. But then again, I have a feeling that at least part of the reason why you liked them so much was because of my playful resistance.

There is so much I want to write to you. My favorite things about birthdays, anniversaries, and celebrations in general, are always the cards. There's nothing quite like stringing together the perfect words to communicate to someone exactly how you feel. Most of the time the gift becomes insignificant in comparison if the emotion in the card is just right. For this reason, I want to write you the perfect note and send it up to heaven for you.

Blake, you mean more to me than you'll ever know. Not only did you teach me about true love during your life, but in your death, you also taught me about forgiveness, acceptance, spirituality, and having patience with myself. I never thought in a million years that something as tragic as losing you would somehow turn into a blessing. But it really has. I wish with all of my heart that you didn't die, but if you had to go, I feel unbelievably lucky that you left me with such incredible parting gifts.

I'm sorry this letter has bounced around from topic to topic in a not so cohesive way, but that really matches how my brain is working right now. I'm thinking of everything all at once, trying to soak it all in. I hope today is a happy day, even though I know sadness will permeate every minute of it. But I think that's ok. I'm learning that happiness isn't the absence of sadness, it's using your sadness properly. Every day, and especially today, I'm using my sadness to feel closer to you, to myself, and the world.

I love you, William Blake. Happy anniversary.

Love Forever,
Briana

Collecting Gifts

I'm flying home to Arizona this weekend because November 23 marks one year since Blake and I started dating. This morning when I woke up with an aching heart and eyes full of tears, I decided that today was a good day to start collecting anniversary presents for him. 

The last time I visited Blake's grave I brought shells, sand, and sea glass as a gift for his birthday. I did this because he loved the beach, especially the beaches of San Diego. We always planned that I would move here for graduate school and he would join me soon after. This gift  was my way to bring the beach to him, showing we can share San Diego in a symbolic way. And as an ongoing reminder that I have the honor and privilege of living our dream for both of us, I decided to bring bits of the beach to give him every time I come to visit.

So in order to find Blake's anniversary presents, I walked to the beach at the end of my street. But what started out as a quick way to listen to my heart, turned into hours of connecting with the ocean. I was mesmerized by the tide and its enchanting pull. I watched as it rushed over my sea gems, clouded and concealed them, and then revealed all that I saw before and more. 

The tide followed the same pattern over and over again, but somehow it kept teaching me different lessons. At first I learned how to rethink my disappointment when a pretty shell that I wanted got swept away. I was excited to find something beautiful, so when the water took it I got upset. But as this kept happening I started to realize that the shell wasn't mine to begin with; it belonged to the ocean. Because of this, I didn't actually lose anything. I was lucky to see the pretty shell for as long as I did, so I learned to let it go with peace and gratitude.

Eventually I transitioned from that lesson to a lesson about the power of patience. Instead of searching for shells, I started to let them come to me. I just stood there, basking in the sun, floating in the wind, and feeling like part of the ocean. When I looked down, the tide would retreat back just long enough for me to pick up what it had left for me. I knew what was there was mine to take because I didn't reach for it, it reached for me.

There is so much more I could write about the ocean. After Blake and my trip to the Monterrey Bay Aquarium back in May, we talked for hours about how magical it is. Not only does the ocean have a pulse, as evidenced by the tide, it also has a soul. If you are quiet enough, you can hear it speak to you. And if you are open enough, it has gifts for you to collect. Not only in the form of shells and rocks, but in lessons about how to live your life connected to the beauty of the world. 

Three Months/ Our First Kiss

Today marks three months since Blake's death. How does that make me feel? Confused. When I was on the phone with his mom earlier tonight I told her it seems like I haven't seen Blake in so long, but the pain makes it feel like it happened just yesterday. On one hand it's getting harder and harder to remember him exactly as he was, but on the other hand I still live with the constant memory of him. It's difficult to wrap my mind around the amount of time that's passed because time doesn't seem to follow logical rules. His death seems so long ago, yet so current.

I wanted to make a conscious effort tonight to acknowledge three months by focusing on only the happiness Blake brought me. Since it's getting easier to push past the pain and smile, I thought I'd celebrate that. I looked through pictures and I couldn't help but laugh at some of the goofy ones we took. I picked out some of my favorites and put them together in a collage.

Going through all of the fun memories and reminiscing made me think back to how it all began. A month ago I started writing a post about our first kiss, but was unable to finish it because of my preoccupation with thinking about his addiction. Tonight, I want to honor his memory (and celebrate the progress I've made) by finishing the story:

                                                _________________________________

There's always that moment. Either you look back on it and realize its significance in hindsight or it's so special you know right in the instant it’s happening. For me, it was the latter. After a week of endless texting, meeting up, dates, and getting to know each other, Blake finally kissed me. Our first kiss was that moment.

The night we re-met, I spent the majority of the time with Blake and a group of his best friends. He was the one I knew the least out of all of them, but I always thought he was really handsome. When I asked if anyone needed a ride home from the bar, Blake and one friend took my offer. He fought to get the passenger seat and insisted his friend's house was closer and he should be dropped off first.  When Blake and I discussed this night later on, I explained how I thought he was setting this up so he could try to kiss me. 

But he didn't. Instead, he gave me an innocent hug and said goodnight. I shrugged it off as him not being interested in me after all. Even though he asked for my phone number, I assumed it was because we got along well and he wanted to be friends.

However, only a couple minutes after I dropped him off he sent me a text that said: "Maybe I was a wuss because I did not say it to your face, but I didn’t want to be a creep! But you are extremely beautiful! Thank u for the ride! I really do appreciate it!" From that point on we had a continuous conversation via text message and over the phone for the rest of the week. 

A few days later we went on a date to the Suns game and even went to a movie after because we didn't want the night to end. Yet when he dropped me off at my house, he gave me a tight hug, but no kiss. I was confused. Why was this guy who had been talking to me NON STOP for the past four days not trying to kiss me? Was I just making it up in my head that we were interested in each other? 

The night before I had to fly back to California, Blake invited me over to watch a movie. I was already out with high school friends from my grade, so I didn't know if I wanted to leave. One of my friends recognized Blake's name popping up on my phone throughout the night and called me out on it. What's going on between you two? I don't know?... I really didn't.

When I finally got in my car and had to make the choice to drive home or see Blake, I was conflicted. It was getting late and him asking me to come to his house after a night out seemed a little sketchy to me. I directly questioned his motives and he snapped back at me. He defended himself and said he had behaved like nothing less than a gentleman to me and it was insulting that I even thought that. He said if I remembered correctly, he had been waiting for me to come over since the very beginning of the night and it was me that was pushing it back later and later. He said he would really like me to come over, but only if that was what I wanted. He wasn't going to try to convince me, it was my choice and I needed to make it; the way I had been stringing him along was unfair.

Damn.

I sat in my car in shock for a few minutes. Who was Blake Norvell anyway? I thought I had him pegged as this handsome, popular guy who knew he could get whatever he wanted. I liked the idea of hanging out with him and getting to know him, but up until that point I wasn't convinced we actually matched well. But the way he handled himself in that moment caught me off guard in a powerful way. He was totally right about everything he said. 

I was expecting him to be just like every other guy when clearly he wasn't like anyone else I've ever met. I had such a fixed notion about how he was going to treat me that I blocked myself from seeing that everything he did refuted that. In that moment I felt a mix of things. Embarrassed for the assumptions I made, but also in awe of how he called them to my attention in a way that resonated with me. No one ever had that effect on me before. I swallowed my pride, admitted I was wrong, and started driving to his house.

He had this big 3D TV that he just bought that he wanted to show me. He started talking all about it and how he set it up and a million other geeky things I didn't understand. I never knew he was so intelligent. But how would I have known? I never gave him the opportunity to show me that side of him. So I listened as he explained about his days in middle school as a hacker and the e-commerce business he was starting to get off the ground. He was so much more than I initially thought he was. I watched his eyes light up as he started explaining his plans for the future and that made mine light up too.

After I noticed what time it was, I was afraid I would fall asleep on my drive home. He offered to walk me out to my car. As we hugged goodbye the embrace lingered, neither of us wanted to let go. He asked if it was ok to kiss me. I laughed. Little did he know I had been waiting for that kiss all week. But in the end I was grateful he waited because then I actually knew who I was kissing. Who was Blake Norvell? Not only handsome, popular, and confident, but more importantly for me, a guy I genuinely liked and saw as my match.

That defining moment I talked about before? That kiss was it. It was so special and we both knew it in the very instant it was happening. I knew he was going to be the man to challenge me and he knew I was the woman who was going to ground him. And we both knew we were about to bring each other so much happiness. I'm not sure how a kiss can tell you that much, but it really did. 
                                                 _________________________________

Video Tribute to Our Love

A beautiful video put together by Tiana Chavez to commemorate Blake and my relationship. 

I really needed this tonight. Thank you for being annoying and always insisting on taking videos of us. The love I see in our eyes and the pure happiness on our faces reminds me that my deep sadness is only a result of having experienced a love that was profoundly beautiful.

One Month/ Our Twin Freckles

Why are mornings the hardest?

I think it's probably because I'm either waking up from a dream about you, expecting to have you next to me but having to realize you're not, or starting the process of another day that I am going to have to fight to get through. Usually it's all three.

So for today, the official one month anniversary of your death, I am going to get through this morning by focusing on one of my happiest memories with you:

I've always been fascinated by freckles because I only have about 10 total. For whatever reason, I find them extremely cute, especially when they are placed randomly on a person's body with no other freckles around.

I decided to pick out which of your freckles were my favorites. You had one on your face that was really cute, I kissed it. One on your neck. And then I found one on your shoulder. Since I only have about 10 freckles, I know exactly where all of mine are. When I found the one on your shoulder, I freaked out a little bit. I have one in the EXACT same place!

You laughed, because I am ridiculous, and checked to make sure I was right. I was, obviously.

You kissed my shoulder freckle and told me they were our twin freckles. You told me I had to kiss yours back to make it official.

You decided that from now on, we could send each other love and positive energy through our twin freckles whenever we were apart. Since we were in a long distance relationship, we were apart often. This would be a way that we could always remain connected and be with each other even when we weren't in the same room.

When I put my finger on my twin freckle, the rest of my hand touches my heart. I am going to do that a lot today. I hope Blake is up in heaven sending me lots of love and positive thoughts as he is touching his twin freckle.