A letter from June 7th, 2018

Writing from freshman year: I understand why they call it a broken heart now. The moment i found out was shocking. I didn’t know that your heart actually feels broken. I feel a crack inching its way from the top slowly breaking through each strong part of it with every tear. My heart is strong. I stop the tares from ignoring what caused them, but sooner or later it breaks. The overflow of it burst through the barrier and soon it cuts off a piece and a huge rush of pain, guilt, stupidity and hurt flows through you just as fast as a smile can. It hurts, it really hurts. I feel the piece fall deep down into the dark corners of my body. The light goes out once it hits the bottom. My mind can only think of why, why, why. Repeating over and over like a broken radio. But they call it a broken heart because only that one piece fell and it is a little cracked. But something broken can be fixed. They don’t call it the lost heart or forgotton only broken. You still have the rest of it to give and slowly but surely people no matter who they are can pick that peace up, turn on the light, and restore your broken heart. The Kitchen of Spices The scent of clove and nutmeg fills the kitchen. A tall and lean woman wearing a long flowy dress is moving from stove, to pot, to bowl, throwing in different spices so swift and easily it almost looks like a dance. Every once and a while she’ll stop and pick up her wine glass, only a little full, off the white marble counter and takes a slow sip while staring at the small tv up against the white wall. She smiles when another girl walks in. The simple blue and white countertops and cabinets welcome her as much as the smell does. The space between countertop, stove and sink is so narrow that every time they walk by they come so close to stubbing their toes, but they know where the sharp corners are without even looking. The woman in the flowy dress stops to look at one of the walls. There are photos of families laughing and embracing one another, the people remind the woman of the space that they use to take up. The absence of them are like the wine bottle opened and left on the counter next to the sink with empty mugs and used up tea bags, left alone as if someone is waiting for them to clean themselves. There are drawings as well of stick figures, giant flowers and strangely colored box houses with the words “I love you mama” written in letters of different shapes and angles, so colorful that they stand out in the plain kitchen. The women’s attention return to the smell of the spices and meats occupying the entire house with the promise of a filling dinner for two. Over the loud talking and laughter they forget about the music blasting on the speakers until the one song they both know comes on and they break into dance and sing with scratchy voices that are off key, not afraid of anyone who might hear them, because in this moment it is just the two of them. Once the song and the excitement has ended the woman in the flowy dress goes back to her dance around the kitchen stove and disappears into the spices. What it Means to Be Me I wish that I could watch the film of my life, and look at the progression of my character Thinking about the first day being anxious and ecstatic I was just a new face in the crowd longing for direction like a lost tourist in my own country It turns out that avoiding the traffic can cause more harm than good I envisioned what I would be like if I were to be solved, but I couldn’t get my problems fixed I wanted to be a perfectly solved Rubik’s cube, orderly and unmixed, a kite flying high with perfect wind The world was full of endless possibility Then, a bullet went off in my head, suprised me never to be forgotten never to be created again And now, the world is a harsh, cold place The reflections of the sky and stars go blurry The fantasy everyone lives in starts to fade I didn’t hate the things she had, I just hated that I didn’t. I began dreaming of the past to dwell on the missing pieces of myself, the pieces that had been scattered, lost in time and space Now I am aware that I don’t know what I don’t know. Now I am stopping at every intersection, looking both ways and slowly accelerating I earned these medals, my chest These medals give me independence Now I feel fulfilled and unconfined With new knowledge I break out of my cage My fingers dance across the keys my pen scribbles through the page with ease As I continue on I will have to find a balance, a balance of transforming and growing, a balance of staying true to what it means to be me. Yesterday was Thea’s memorial and it was strange for me because i haven't been to a funeral/memorial since joey. After Joey’s funeral i kept a lot of things out. A lot of emotions that id prefer not to show i just didn’t. Yes, i cried but I would only really cry by myself in my room or shower and that was enough for me. I didn’t like to be comforted like how my grandma held me when joey was cremated and i didn’t want to talk about like i use to with my mom. So when thea died, I only broke down a couple of times in public and then on my own and most of the time after i didn’t feel much of anything. I was so use to closing myself off that i just didn’t want to let it show. People around me were crying but I still felt embarrassed and weak if i did. What I found out that by closing myself off i was not only hurting my own emotional being but my friends as well. I didn’t show emotion to them like that. Moments that we needed to cry together I just held them and felt blank and empty. But yesterday at Thea’s memorial, when phil was talking about how loving each other and saying how it was okay to cry even if you didn’t know her that well struck inside me and all my emotions i’ve been holding back came up, for thea, for joey, for my friends and for myself.