Her Beauty

I woke up missing her blonde hair and blue eyes this morning. Were they blue?

Those eyes that were almost too big for her face, and the soft ringlets that made her a cuter version of Meg Ryan.

The quirkiness in her voice.

The conversations where I longed to see the world through her eyes.

I still can't help but wonder if I had gone to the party that night, if I could have been there at the right moment. If I would have heard her screams while walking by her apartment door. If I somehow could have saved her.

I still have a hard time watching movies or listening to stories of the same violence she endured. Flashback-raw, aching. It's just as visceral as the moment I found out the details of her death.

I'm writing this, because I want to purge the crap inside my head. The things that built her up to sainthood. I'm writing this because I'm tired of holding everything so close and safe as not to be faced with the uncomfortableness of it all, or choosing to discuss it only with friends who were there and can empathize. The sanctuary of not being greeted by flashbacks, faces of pity, or forced into a space where I must evade feelings or be judged, is a place of silence.

No more silence.

It's time to move forward. And instead of hiding, it's time to be honest and upfront in my life about how I feel, now - in the present - instead of wishing I could go back and change the past.

She is gone.

But there are others in my life, often those whom I claim mean the most to me, who deserve better than complacency or the common indifference which I have been guilty of extending and calling it love. I could only hope if something happened to one of those people, they would know exactly how I felt and where I stood with them. That I could afford them honesty, love, and such treatment, every day of their lives, as if it might be their last day on Earth.