You aren’t crazy if you hear voices

There’s a stigma behind having voices in your head. At best, people will joke about it. “Everyone hears voices,” they’ll say. They might even tell you that it’s okay to listen to them. Might even tell you that it’s okay to talk to them. But then they’ll joke “But if they talk back, that’s when you should worry.”

They don’t realize that the voices in your head are actually a part of you. Probably a suppressed part.

Everyone likes to think that the voices in your head are dangerous. And maybe sometimes they can be a little reckless if you aren’t doing much with your life. Maybe they want to shake things up for you because they’ve realized that you’ve settled for a life you didn’t want. Are you at a desk job when you’d rather be out walking among the trees or working with animals? Are you working with kids when you’d rather be painting or writing? Are you in a place that you always want a vacation from?

Maybe your voices know you better than you know yourself. Maybe your voices are the part of you that was told to stop being so excited over “silly things” or told to be realistic and pick a job that would actually make you money instead of going after what you were actually passionate about. Maybe your voices just want a conversation but because so many people think voices make you crazy.

But what is crazy other than a lazy way of saying that you are too different to be taken seriously. Really? You’re going to let them tell you that. Don’t sell yourself short.

Next time you hear that voice in your head, or maybe even just a vague awareness of something else going on under the surface, tune into it. Listen to it for a minute. Give it a chance to actually voice its thoughts.

“What are you doing with your life?” It might ask. “Why are you even here?”

Maybe it isn’t being harsh. Maybe it realizes your actual potential and knows that you aren’t even giving yourself a chance. Maybe it wants to remind you of what you used to want to be.

Talk to yourself. It doesn’t have to be outloud. Your voice is in your head as well. All these voices are parts of you. Listen to them, make friends with them, see how to change up your life so that you are settling for something or just waiting for retirement for your life to start.

Embrace the crazy if that’s what it is for you. Crazy isn’t an insult. Crazy is knowing that you deserve better than commonplace and going after what you actually want in life. Find what’s holding you back, cut ties with it, and just listen to your own voice for once. Don’t let them silence you anymore.

Bittersweet NaNoWriMo

Today is very bittersweet for me. November 30 marks the end to NaNoWriMo, a challenge taken on by the most determined and amazing group of writers I have ever met. NaNo has come to mean so much to me in the last five years. But this year, this year I just couldn’t.

School has been kicking my butt this semester and I started falling behind early on due to mental struggles and emotional plight. I’ve been dealing a lot with things that are going on inside of myself that I am struggling to find the words for. I so wanted to jump into NaNo – even part-time! – to get back into the groove of writing and finding ways to express what was going on.

But some days, even making it to class was an accomplishment. I have been more exhausted these last months than I can ever remember. I am tired of being so different that people don’t really know how to help me.

But still I know that I must continue to do things as only I can, or my life gets voided. If I become like the masses, I cease to matter. One big grey blob of similarity and blending in will never be beautiful.

What is beautiful are those who walk their own way. Those who color themselves differently. Those like who I have met because of my years doing NaNo.

I have been so inspired by those I have had the pleasure of writing alongside and those I have learned from. I cherish each and every writer, study partner, accountability partner, and encouraging friend who has ever shared in my journey as I wrote through my novels.

Today, I want to celebrate my fellow writers. Their victories, whether by hitting the 50,000 word mark or just creating a character they love or a perfect scene to be used later. You are my inspiration and though I missed out this year, I will be back with a vengeance next year.

Open Letter to Everyone

This year has been hell. Figuring out a separation that I never wanted because I still loved them. And a flood, literal and figurative, as my apartment flooded taking away everything that no longer mattered. Mental strain meant depression and anxiety. My whole world felt like it was crashing around me.

And it kinda was.

But I had people, friends, who came to my aid. Who held me up when they had no clue what was going on. I have been a hurricane and they were caught in the eye. And yet they stayed, just talking to me and being there for me. I needed them and they were there.

These friends. They are different than anything I have known.
I don’t expect you to understand what they are or how they live. You don’t need to understand it. It isn’t for you to experience. But we all respect each other’s experiences. We let them have their own experience in this life. We don’t try to change each other.

I love these people closest to me because they have become a part of my own experience here. But not only that, they have become my happiest memories.

I’ve been searching for that since I left home. And finally I found it. I wanted to bring home some of that happiness to share with my original family only to see that they would not welcome it.

Too different, they said.
Sinful, they called it.
Sometimes I wonder if sinful replaced happy. Can no one be happy anymore without being sinful? Is happiness a sin?

Because if it is, I don’t want to be on your side. I don’t want to be alive if it means that I will never be happy. So instead, I’ll stay on my side. I will shine my own light and let others celebrate with me. Because in this light, I can be my purest form. I can be most happy with others who celebrate me as I am.

Maybe I am too different. But here, that isn’t a bad thing. And for that reason, I am staying here.

What’s really in a name?

Over the years, I tried out different names for myself. I started out of course with the name my parents gave me. At one point I changed up the spelling of it for fun. And now I go by Ryn. But names are more than just fun for me, they carry a lot of weight.

To me, a name is the biggest representation of yourself. It’s how you introduce yourself to others and it’s how they reference you or call for you. Your name is pretty much one of the most important parts about you.

When people get married, it’s common for them to share a name. This, to me, is a promise. It’s a shared bond. It’s literally saying, this name is now a part of both of us. Whether you take on the name of your partner, they take on yours, you hyphenated, or you take on a new name, you’re sharing a major part of your identity with that person now. And it’s simply beautiful to me

You may think then, that I’m against those couples who don’t share their names. Actually no. Not at all. Some people want their identity to stay the same and their bond isn’t shaken by that. These people stay who they are despite being in a relationship and that’s beautiful as well.

These sorts of name changes are common but no one really gives a thought about them. Until you want to change your name as an individual.

Most people never have the urge to change names or never even think about names at all. But I think about names all the time. As a writer, I’d say the bulk of my time writing is figuring out names. How do I want to represent this character? What connotation does this name have? What does this name mean to me? How does this name resonate in the story?

To want to change one’s name is extremely significant to me. It’s not abandonment of your past. Quite the contrary. Changing one’s name is starting over with yourself. It’s a promise to yourself to start over. Give yourself a clean place to start from. Whether you change around a few letters, adopt a nickname, or completely change it, you’re giving yourself the freedom to recreate yourself.

Clean slate or a complete awakening or rebirth. You are making a new way for yourself.

If anyone ever tells me that they are changing their name, this is what it means to me and I will treat it with the utmost importance. I will immediately start calling them by this new name – unless they ask me to hold off or refrain for whatever reasons. They will become a new person to me and the old left behind.

The new person will have to clean up any mess left behind by the old one, but under a new name there will be new light shed on those old ways. A new name is a promise to yourself to do better than before.

So if you ever change your name, or even want to try it out for a short while, do it in a way that attempts to be better than before. Forgive more people, clean up old messes, tie up loose ends. But more than anything, under this new name, be more honest with yourself and above all, love and respect yourself more.

I definitely will. Your new name is a promise to yourself and to anyone you share it with. Be it marriage or through introduction, you have something new. Wear it with pride and honor.

And to anyone who refuses to notice that this is what you are changing your name for, I hope they aren’t around for very much longer. I know what it’s like to have people refuse to see the new you. Give them time. They might still see it as abandonment. I don’t know. Maybe share this post with them. Maybe I can enlighten them a bit. And if you are someone who hasn’t adapted to someone else’s name change, consider everything I’ve said here. Maybe it’ll change your mind about things. Don’t beat yourself up about it, just try your best to understand their reasons and do better from now on.

Good luck and best wishes to all who read this. Names are important. What are you making of yours?

The Stove Might be Hot

I grew up ascribing to a religion that I didn’t fully understand. At this point, it hardly matters which religion because I think this happens to all of us. We are taught whatever religion or belief system that our parents believe and by the end, I’ll wrap up why I think that is both a good and bad idea.

So, my parents, just like yours, taught me what they believed to be true. I participated in holidays and traditions important to those beliefs, read from a book of those teachings, and followed in the family norms of the believers. I grew up thinking that this was how it was supposed to be and was happy enough to follow this.

But somewhere around middle school, I learned that our belief system wasn’t all that there was out there. Other people believed and acted differently. Throughout high school I would be taught that this was wrong and bad and I needed to save these people from the bad teachings. It seemed good enough in theory but it felt wrong in practice.

Underlying every thought I expressed was a sick feeling in my gut that this wasn’t good. I was made to believe that I was worried so much about their downfall but it wasn’t that. Instead, it was my gut saying that I had no authority to judge what they were taught, what they believed, and what they valued in life.

So I went without religion for quite some time. Maybe if everyone just stopped believing in these religious teachings, we can find harmony in the world. We’ll stop having wars over which god is true or which culture is right. Maybe a world without religion is a good thing. So I set about encouraging people to abandon religion completely. But this was met with the same sickly feeling as trying to convince them to come into my religion. And in a way, I realized I was still trying to get them to believe what I believed, even though I thought I was freeing them from religion altogether. Same thing.

I was confused. What was I doing wrong? With religion, I felt I had to change everyone to my way of thinking. Without religion, I thought I had to free everyone from a forced belief system – and over to my new way of thinking. Where was the problem then.

Now might be a good time to mention that I have spent an unhealthy amount of time contemplating this dilemma when the answer is so freakishly simple.

Think about it this way: when you first enter the world, you are a blank slate. You know nothing. You have two ways of learning things. You can learn from others: what they say, how they act. But you also can go out there and try it all for yourself. You can learn from your mom, “Don’t touch the stove, it’s hot” or you can touch it and discover it for yourself. Either one is a valid way of learning the same message: the stove is hot. You reach the same conclusion.

One though, comes with the pain on your hand, the other one comes with trusting who is telling you the information. In my eyes, these are both a slight cost. Early on in your life, you’re probably more apt to do both. Your mom tells you the stove is hot, you then touch it to find out. This works to do a few things at once. You learn to validate the information of others by testing the theory yourself. The more often you validate the things your mom says, the easier it is to just take her word for it that she does indeed know what she is talking about.

Bringing this parallel to religion, the people who tell you things, have often gone through their own chain of validation. They have learned to trust certain people and have taken what they say as true, or they have tested theories directly. Anyone can do this. So when your parents or people tell you “I know what I’m talking about, I’ve been through this before,” basically, they are saying, “I know what it is to take someone’s word for it and I am extending you the option of taking my word for it so you don’t have to hurt your own hand.”

It’s all in good intentions really. Looking back on my life, I understand this now. My parents were just trying to save my hands. Whether they were going to burn on the stove or in some version of hell, they wanted to protect me. For that, I cannot fault them.

My life has been pretty crazy so far. I’ve stopped trusting people so much and had to burn my hands a few times too many because I really don’t know who to trust or what to believe. I’ve read up on a lot of religions and belief systems and I can’t find one that I fit into. I like messages from each. I like the spirits in every living thing from pagan type beliefs, I like the self empowerment from new age teachings. I love the idea of sacrificing oneself to save others that a lot of the major religions believe. The ideas of reincarnation and nirvana seem to make a lot of sense to me and karma seems pretty plausible. I believe that we aren’t the only ones out there but I think we’ve fallen out of harmony with the universe and the source love. I meditate often to get right with myself because at the end of the day, I am all that I can guarantee to myself. I may use different terms for things than you and others but we all do in the end.

I could ask five people to pick up paper and they could all pick up a different kind of paper. One has a notebook, another a legal pad, someone else picks up card stock, another makes their own paper, and the other has index cards. All technically still paper and yet all represented in different ways. Of course, we’re going to disagree on bigger things than paper. Especially when none of us were there at the beginning of the universe and technology hasn’t created a time machine to go back and check to see if their calculations are in fact the truth. Some ideas sound more plausible than others but does it actually matter?

In the end, the only thing that’s going to matter to us is what we think is important. Whether we think religion is important to us or not is something we have to decide individually for ourselves. In the end, we each have our own lives to lead and no one can change our minds unless we want them changed. Maybe I wanted to walk away from religion five years ago to see what else I could find. Maybe I really was searching for the truth.

Did I find it? I think so. What is it? That’s going to be a different answer often. Today, I’d say my truth is of living in harmony with the earth, doing my best to leave the smallest carbon footprint that I possibly can. Tomorrow, I may find more truth in being a part of a community where we can all be interdependent and connected to each other. And still I might say my root truth or at least the truth of me that pertains to everyone else on the planet, is to let everyone fin find their own truth. If there is anything that I think might be strong enough to want others to learn, it’s respecting everyone’s right to believe as they feel is true.

Sure, in parenting, this might be harder to do. You still need to protect those little hands from the stove. I think it still comes back to the choice. Tell them the stove is hot and let them decide whether they want to believe you or not. If they need to test it for themselves in order to more trust you, then go ahead and let them. You’ve done what you could. But if you fight so hard with them to keep them from ever touching the stove for themselves, you may have saved those little hands but now they might always doubt whether what you say actually has a basis in truth or if now they think you were lying because you wouldn’t let them verify it.

I respect the religions who teach their children the values that they believe and then give them the space to go out into the world and try other things before committing themselves to the religion or whatever.

Whatever you do though, you know how you came to believe what you believe now. Remember your journey, remember your doubts. And then, extend everyone else the freedom to discover what they need to in the ways that they need to hear it. If the stove really is hot, you can bet they’ll learn to stop touching it eventually. But if you discover yourself to be protecting them from a cold stove, that’s not very fair. Remember that the stove does cool off. We can all learn this along side knowing when the stove is hot.

Setting Goals and Celebrating Life

This last year has been a crazy hectic year for me with many changes and pitfalls.

My spouse and I decided we needed different things in life and have parted ways.
My old apartment flooded and I was displaced.
I moved in with a new companion and her cat. Both very loving and supportive of all my quirks.
I have decided to switch almost fully over to gender neutral terms for my gender identity.
I have decided that gender does not matter for my identity so any pronouns are fine (she, him, they, though I do like being Sir)
I have come out as gender blind and accepted myself no matter who might reject me because of this.
I am selling most of my possessions in favor of a much more minimal lifestyle.
I have added a Philosophy major to my studies.
I have set goals for a Library Science focus to one day open my own used bookstore or library.

With each change brings new paths or forces me to carve a new path through the trees. But with each path, I have become more true to myself and who I want to become. Sometimes life feels short and I feel like I have a lot to do with not a lot of time to do it. But I try to focus on one day or one moment at a time and not just do what I have to do but do what I need to do to make sure that what I am doing is helping me to become this being that I want to be. To become the Ryn I need to be.

I have some changes yet to finalize and some plans left to execute, but I’m definitely on the right track. I may get stressed and overwhelmed by having so much adult stuff thrown at me at once, but I’m doing well overall. I have great friends and family who support me and keep me thinking positively on those darker days.

And I do still have those days. Days where I would rather not exist. When I think I take up too much space. Days when I feel like this world is going to fall and I have no power to save it. I have dark days and some days it’s all I can do to just sit there under blankets, sobbing, making sure someone knows that I’m struggling. Because it’s hard to be vulnerable. To let someone know that despite all the progress you are making that some days just crush you. You want to be strong and to not fall backwards to where you used to be. But I assure you, everyone trips. Some of us fall harder than others. Others just don’t show it. But if you are struggling, if you are trying to be your own savior when all you can think about is not want to exist, please reach out.

1-800-273-8255
This is the number for the US National Suicide Prevention Hotline. If you have no one else, give it a call. You are not a waste of space. You are made of the same elements formed in the stars that you wish on.

From someone else who has suffered, give it another chance. Make it through one more day. And if you do, make a goal to reach for tomorrow. Set small ones first. Finish your homework for class. Make it through a day of work to keep getting that paycheck. Apply for one job today. Simply finish your résumé. Do one thing today that will set you up for another step tomorrow. Make it as small as you need to so that once you reach it you can look back and say that you did something that might make tomorrow a little easier. From taking a walk to clear your head or cleaning off your desk so you have a place to work, there are a billion things that can set you up for your next steps. Hell, even making a list of what you have accomplished thus far is good enough! I did that at the beginning of this post.

But more than anything, remember that simply making it until tomorrow is a feat in itself and should be celebrated. You are to be celebrated. Every day.

Mother Earth

I believe in Mother Earth as the planet in which we are living on. So many people get trapped into thinking that mother relates only to human existence and tries to visualize Mother Earth as a humanistic being who holds and cares for the Earth. When in reality, Mother is simply an endearing term added to the name we have given our planet.

It is easy to see why we have attached Mother to our planet. A mother brings forth life. Earth, in every sense of the word, has brought forth every life that lives here. From the bacteria to the human, the penguin and the ladybug, Earth has brought forth them all. Each one is deserving of it’s life here. No one individual or type of creature has more right than any other. Some contribute more back to the Earth, such as worms purifying the soil, butterflies and bees helping the flowers to grow, the flowers and herbs bringing forth our medicines.

What I see as the main problem we have today is that humankind thinks it is above it all. That everything has lived only so far as to get us here and keep us here. But we are not the top in any sense. When we die, we go back into the ground to become dirt. Ashes get buried under trees and the Earth continues her beautiful balance of the Circle of Life. The problem is though, that we think our death is enough to make up for all the shit we’re destroying during our lifetimes.

We have caused radiation from wars that will persist long after humans have died off. Long after our bones decay and our houses are overgrown. I have no doubt that Mother Earth will take back her life and bring forth something even more beautiful after our effects die along with us. But I’d like to help speed up that process for her. Without her, I wouldn’t be here. Without her, there would be no here in the first place. So let’s start treating Mother Earth with the respect she rightfully deserves for supporting our disastrous excuse for an existence.

What will you do?

Dancing for the Core

Clearing the floor, I turned on my favorite music. I took the center spot and ensuring my door was closed, I spun around in my room letting my new dress twirl around me. My movements were sporadic and haphazard along with the rock violin sounds of Lindsey Stirling.

Despite the fact that I committed to dance lessons for ten years, I never really thought of myself as a dancer. Maybe because I never really practiced it. For me, dancing was more like an expression of one’s mood in the moment. Not something you practiced to make perfect.

But my sister came from the other school of thought. And I very much enjoyed watching what came from her practices. She was angelic and graceful unlike how I saw myself. I wonder now if I didn’t stick with dance for so long just to try to impress her. But I couldn’t commit to it like she did.

As with any master of craft, watching them made you feel small. Like you’d never be where they are. And it’s true. There’s no way I would ever learn to dance like my sister. In order to do that, I would have to be her. And that was not my place.

And so instead I just watched. I watched her perform and let her inspire me. Not to dance, but to do what only I could do. I don’t think she’ll ever really know how much watching her inspired me. And not just watching her dance. I watched her simply live.

To this day, I think of her often. We live miles apart and live very different lives. But when I dance around the house or clear a spot in my room to dedicate to the freedom of movement, I think back to those years we danced.

Not many people know that I danced. That I took classes and performed on stage. I hid my dancing days because I was trying very hard to not be so feminine. I wanted to be accepted as one of the guys and become more masculine in my everyday life. But masculinity didn’t really work out for me. There’s a lot on that side of the coin that I don’t ascribe too. I couldn’t give a care about sports, cars, or how much I work out. And I’ve struggled a great deal trying to find my place along the gender spectrum.

But my dancing days were great days. Moving around the floor in synchronized movements with the rest of class was a fun challenge. Not to mention an energy burst that I could scarcely find elsewhere.

I haven’t thought about dancing for some time. But I do find myself moving along to my music as I walk around campus, changing my pace to keep the beat of the song playing. And moving around in the kitchen as I cook with some background noise. Or even just swaying along as I sit in front of my computer, my fingers finding the beat as I type. Dancing is quite innate to me. And dancing doesn’t have a gender.

For me, dancing is the expression of a soul. Yesterday, I cleared my floor by setting my mattress upright against the wall to give myself the space to dance. It’s quite hard to move a king size mattress by yourself. And yet I did that simply so I could give myself the space to do something I hadn’t even thought about for years. And I’ll now be looking to replace my bed for something more manageable for this rekindled love of dancing. Because after I danced, I felt peaceful again. I felt more like myself and I’ve kinda been losing that lately.

Dancing there in my room with some of my favorite music. It was just bliss.

My Five Year Old Mind

From the outside looking at my facts, I’m a young twenty-something, college student. Society claims that my priority should be school. Getting a degree will help me in the future to secure a job, add to the system, and benefit my fellow humans. They expect me to stay on top of all my assignments, work when I’m not in class to earn a means of paying for school while gaining experience to add to a resume. Everything I do should be working towards my future where I’m working a steady job and settling down in one place with a family.

Oh but while I’m at it, I should enjoy the college experience because I only get to experience this once. Plug into clubs and join groups with a cause. These will also look good on a resume, they tell me.

All the while, I’m staring back at them with the eyes, heart, and mind of a five year old.

Do you remember being five? Coloring and nap time. The most difficult thing you had to worry about was getting a swing on the playground and having someone push you so you could feel like you were flying.

But as I aged, people were quick to remind me that humans couldn’t fly. As if that was going to stop me. They insisted that I get my head out of the clouds and focus on the important things. The things that would get me somewhere in life. Things that would make sure I didn’t starve. Things that would keep me alive just to keep doing the things that kept me alive.

You see, I’ve been struggling with this a lot lately. Get a job to pay for a roof over your head and a place to sleep so you can be rested for the job that gives you a place to sleep. How many of us actually enjoy all the aspects of the things we have? Or are we all so busy that it all becomes just stuff? Sure, it once had meaning. We had hopes of those craft projects in the corner. But most of us probably come home too tired to really enjoy any of it and just sit our butts on the couch to watch shows we may have even already seen because we’re even too tired for something new.

I don’t want that.

I have the beauty of extra time on my hands because I’m between jobs right now. I also have that mind of a five year old who still questions everything. That annoying kid who just keeps asking why? Yeah, I’m still that kid. And do you want to know why? Because I still don’t get it. Why do we just keep up with a cycle where we don’t have time for the things we actually want to do?

The biggest question I like to ask people is one that challenged me to keep seeking out things in my life. What would you do if money were no object? If you didn’t have to worry about anything financial, what would you be doing? No rent money needed, no bills, no cost for food. No money getting in your way anywhere. Where would you be? What would you be doing?

I ask myself these questions a lot and it keeps me in that five year old mindset. Five year olds haven’t learned yet that money runs the world. Five year olds don’t have anything standing between them and their wildest dreams. Do you remember yours? Your wildest dream? What is it? And why didn’t you go after it?

There’s a new craze sweeping around with people leaving their day jobs, leaving the system, and going out on adventures. They choose a simple life with a lot less excess stuff and hit the road. They travel to lands they used to just see pictures of. They decided that life was just too short to settle into a system. Because for them, the system didn’t work. It didn’t bring them the joy of life. It simply kept them alive to work. And they weren’t okay with that.

They got tired of complaining about Mondays and instead did something crazy where they could rejoice no matter what day it was. They stopped restricting themselves by society’s plans for them. They brought back daydreaming but even more than that, they set out to achieve those dreams.

I’m not yet in a place to get out there and do what I want to do – because unfortunately, money is an object. But I’m working towards it. And I will forever have my sights set on those dreams. And when I achieve those, I’ll set higher ones and keep going.

But when people ridicule me for keeping my mind in that five year old wonder of the world, or getting excited over little things and bouncing around showing everyone, I’m just going to shake my head at them. I refuse to give into anyone else’s idea of what they think my life needs to look like.

I’m a faerie and we don’t give up on our dreams.

The-Milky-Way-over-Mt-Rainier-by-Michael-Matti

What Happened that Day, And What I’ve Learned Since

There are days and memories that will stick with you forever. And there are people who you will never forget.

When the dates grew ever closer to March 11, I warned my group of friends to be prepared and to watch out for me. I knew it was going to be a rough day. Because on March 11, 2011, my grandfather lost his battle to cancer. I remember the day all too clearly. Sitting around his bed at hospice all awake before the sun. He called out and my grandmother came to hold him. They embraced how they could, held hands, and he took his final breaths.

My view was from the couch across the room but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t there in my body. To be honest, I didn’t want to be there. The family was there plus those we adopted into the family over time. But I wanted to be elsewhere.

As if me not being there could have stopped it from happening.

My grandma stood back up, looked to the rest of us, and said “He’s gone” with a voice that was also pretty much gone.

I’ve gone back to that moment way more than is probably healthy to consider what actually happened there. There was no poof with smoke and a magic trick to take him away. No bright light flashing him away to some higher realm. To everyone looking on, his body was still laying right there as it had been for most of the week. But he was gone. We all knew that much.

To this days, I have pondered where he went. And many times, I’ve wanted to go there as well. It’s an interesting feeling to want to go somewhere you’ve never been but even more so to want to go somewhere you don’t even know exists. Many people will call this place Heaven, others will tell me this place doesn’t exist. I don’t think we’ll ever know until it happens to us.

We may catch glimpses. From meditation, or prayer. In dreams, or through a poem that touches us. I think it will feel and be very different for each of us. And I think that’s okay.

Some say that in the end, all we have is ourselves. It’ll be lonely. But that’s not how it was for my grandfather. Looking back on it four years later, I think he knew he was going away. And I think that’s why he called out. He knew he wasn’t alone. I can’t imagine how it must have felt for my grandma to be holding him like she was and then for him to go on or whatever you want to call it.

I know she has felt lonely many times since then. I have too. But I know that wherever it is my grandpa went to, that he’s still connected to her and when it’s her time to go as well, he’ll be right there with her. Just as she was for him.

Some people think it’s okay to argue over what love is. Or to claim that something isn’t love. But in its simplest form, love is simply a willingness to be there for someone when they need you most, no matter what you are feeling in that moment. No matter how hard it is for you to be there, you are there simply because they need you and they matter to you. I want a love like that. Not to take advantage of and abuse the privilege. But to know that through the hardest times of life, someone will be there when you call for them. And more than just having it, I want to give that to others.

Classic love stories have nothing on my grandparents. Forget Romeo and Juliet who got caught up on looks and suffered from miscommunication, I want a love like Grandma and Grandpa. Silly and whimsical, but always there.

I thought March 11 was going to be a hard day. But actually it wasn’t. I cried a bit and felt quite sad throughout the day. But I looked around me and I saw the people who were there. I saw that people were actually there. I called on my friends, and they came. I am loved. And for that, I am eternally grateful.

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