Our Journeys

“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love.”
Washington Irving

i think it is time to delete this journal....
i keep coming back to it and getting sad all over again....

i lost everything i had of ours... of us. my collar...the seashell... our sheets.... everything in my “Chris box”

i made a bold move... i wrote your mother a letter to ask her for some pictures and something of yours to hold.

i tried to use this as a lesson to let go......

weak....

i went by your house.... the water line is high. i wonder, with your love for adrenaline, if you would have made us stay....

i would have gone through this with you... come hell, or high water...

i miss you, still.........................

next month will pass away three years since you left. there is no book of mourning to guide me the way i guided you through bardo. but i know i am better, half healed, half hearted again. in the past, since you have gone, i have withdrawn from every touch and every potential. when feelings in me stirred, i went crawling back to you. i took out what i call my "Chris Box", your wooden cigar box filled with old trinkets of us...my collar, a seashell and a few other little things that were us. i remember and i remind myself that you were my karma, the validation that i am not to have all that i desire. and, worse, that i will only hurt those with whom i try as i have always done...though none as terminally hurt as you. through the years i accept more and more that what you did was not my fault, though i always know i was the lead character on the stage of your life. do i want the responsibility of that role again with another? i just don't know, but i think i may attend the try-outs.
i have been explored and exploring someone new. only a few days, but i did not take out your box. i have thought of you, of course; it is only human, i suppose. and i have talked to you...to the air in my room, sometimes cursing you for leaving me, broken and alone. other times i have asked if you understand that i should move on with my life. you released me in the most tragic way the moment you pulled the trigger. there is little closure in that. sometimes i feel you urging me on...lifting me up the same way you would lift my head out of the water and lock your eyes with mine as i gasped for breath. i think i am breathing again, chris.
miss you and love you, i will always. you changed the person i was, some for the better, most for the worse...leaving me literally gun shy and cold, leaving visions in my head no person should ever witness.... yet, having painted my heart with possibility that i just may find again one day. i know, though, there are a few things i need to do to leave this mental house of ours. the most of it is the anger....i have bathed in the guilt since that very afternoon, but i haven't worked through the anger. there are days i am so angry with you that i want to scream and scratch and kick and punch. i have called you a selfish bastard and am awashed with fresh anger when i think of the conversations you had with me about commitment and devotion falling on both sides. only 12 hours you gave me to come back to you and work it out after only our very first argument. you chose to use your power too late and the wrong way. i have come to terms with the pain.....now i need to come to terms with the anger. maybe, if i am lucky, someone with kindness, love and patience will hold my hand and walk me through it...and, then....he won't let go.

Dearest Chris,

i am letting go. i am not forgetting, for you have painted my life and the colors remaining will forever stain my future. your memory, the memory of us, will reside in a little room in my heart to which the door has been closed and locked. there is no key. it was lost with the scattering of your ashes, perhaps you carry it with you in your next life. visit, if you can. if you've carried with you also the memory of us, however faint it may be, drop by and whisper to me. i've kept my heart's eye open for where you may have taken your rebirth. wondering, with every new bird song and baby's cry, if you have returned close to love's home.
but, in time, that will fade and no longer will i look for you, listen for signs or sigh with the evening breeze in the hopes my sadness will reach you. the hurt will fade, as it has begun to do. the anger will turn to a fond smile of remembrance, as it has begun to do.
life will go on, as it has begun to do.
and love will live here again. its home is sparse now, but it will be redecorated. yesterday's flowers will be tossed into the tide just outside the sliding glass door where the mist is clearing enough to let the sun in through the curtains hanging over the entrance. the fading colors here are turning to new shades, not quite bright, but alive.
and i will live here again, gently with the memory of us kept silently, secretly in its locked room.

Chris, i miss you. i feel so alone wandering through this place without you. still i see you....feel you....in those places of my life we shared. our place along the river....parties.....streets and coffee shops. every week i still drive by your house. someone lives there now.... the light is on at night and i know you did not turn it on. i wonder if they've any clue what you did there. i didn't, that night when i arrived at your house to hold you and be held by you after all the bad words. i slow and imagine the pool and the hot tub...the times we shared there. how you held my head under the water that first time to show to me the control you had over me. and how i hated it. but loved you all the more for it. i have now mourned for you longer than i lived with you and you within my heart.
i cannot get close to another. i am unable to even think of it. i feel damaged and so very alone. how could you come into my life, take my heart and leave with it??
i love you and hate you all at the same time....with a passion that cannot die as easily as you did......

I held a jewel in my fingers
And went to sleep
The day was warm, and winds were prosy
I said, 'Twill keep'

I woke--and child my honest fingers,
The Gem was gone
And now, an Amethyst remembrance
Is all I own.

"I Held A Jewel" by Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)

i missed the 10th day traveling to DC. here is 11....8/19

O son of noble family, listen without distraction. On the eleventh day the blood-drinking manifestation of the Padma family, called Blessed PadmaHeruka, will emerge from the western quarter of your brain and appear before you clearly in union with his consort. His body is dark red in color, with three heads, six arms, and four legs spread wide apart; the right face is white, the left one blue and the center one dark red; his six hands hold a lotus in the first on the right, a trident bearing three human heads in the middle, and an rod in the last, a bell in the first on the left, a skill-cup filled with blood in the middle, and a small drum in the last; his consort Padma-Krodhisvari embraces his body, with her right hand clasped around his neck and her left hand holding a skull full of blood to his mouth.
Do not be afraid of him, do not be terrified, do not be bewildered. Be joyful, and recognize him as the form of your own mind. He is your yidam, so do not be afraid, do not be terrified. He is really Blessed Amitabha with his consort, so feel longing. Recognition and liberation are simultaneous.

O son of noble family, listen without distraction. On the ninth day the blood-drinking manifestations of the Vajra family, called blessed Vajra-Heruka, will emerge from the eastern quarter of your brain and appear before you: his body is dark blue in color, with three heads, six arms, and four legs spread wide apart; the right face is white, the left one red and the center one blue; his six hands hold a vajra in the first on the right, a skill-cup in the middle, and an axe in the last, a bell in the first on the left, a skill-cup in the middle, and a plough-share in the last' his consort Vajra-Krodhisvari embraces his body, with her right hand clasped around his neck and her left hand holding a skull full of blood to his mouth.
Do not be afraid of him, do not be terrified, do not be bewildered. Recognize him as the form of your own mind. He is your yidam, so do not be afraid. He is really Blessed Vajrasattva with his consort, so have devotion. Recognition and liberation are simultaneous.