I still haven't written it down and I don't intend to now. Some days, the awfulness of how he passed engulfs me and there isn't anything else that matters. When that happens, I can't even imagine how people keep on going when someone they love dies. I honestly don't know how I will keep on going when that time comes--I'm certain it will break me.

There are some days when it is so hard to go into work. I have no energy and no heart and my job is so monotonous and not in any way fulfilling. But on other days, I forget it happened, or I almost do anyway and life's what it always was. When I remember, I feel so guilty, until my mind freezes over and I feel nothing. Or I start laughing. I still can't believe that it happened. How a person can just be erased.

Since I got back, I've been walking a lot, both at work and home. With music. It helps to be outside. I've become so house-bound since I moved up here to Washington, ironically (it's so freaking beautiful up here!!), first with that awful depression over Kyle and my loss of faith in the religion I grew up in (though I never did admit my depression included that loss to myself until recently), then with Dad's diagnosis and living with him for six months (still in the midst of that great depression), then with the onset of full-time school and full-time work in early 2013, I just stopped enjoying the outdoors. I had forgotten how much I love being outside. It sounds strange, I know, but every time I get out there, echoes of what I used to feel and be when I was kid/early teen come back and a quiet joy is on the verge of filling me with something good and whole. It's good, it's healing, and I will not let this outlet go ever again.

The dreams with dad have stopped, but I'm still having stressful work dreams with impossible accounts and sheer PANIC; haven't been sleeping well since I got back...shocker, right? And apparently I'm not the only one...muahahhahahahaa. Yep, I did just write that down. Man, I'm such easy pickings; I'm mortified by my transparency.

But that part of me on fire doesn't give a damn.