Post Twenty-Nine: Kudu

I've found a refuge away from "inside" and away from the rain. I discovered it yesterday, thanks to Milena. It's a place I've always known about and a place that I've made several tentative plans to go to, but a place I hadn't actually been to yet. It is Kudu, a coffee house. I went there yesterday to sit with Milena while she did homework so I could read. I read "The Flower of Spain," the first short novel of that one book I got (it was published in the 1920s and smells SO old. The scent is constantly wafting up my nose when I'm reading that book.) that contains four out of fifty of the greatest short novels of all time.

Anyways, while there, Milena called my attention to this journal Kudu keeps for their customers to write in. It's a journal of thoughts and anyone can write anything they'd like in it. She called my attention to this journal for one particular entry. It was the first entry, I believe. Anyways, I wrote it down really quickly on a notepad file in my computer and posted it later that day as my status on Facebook, but I want to record it here also, just for good measure. (it'll also be added to my feel good notebook. It's the notebook i record in all lovely things said to or shared with me that just make me feel better.) Here you are:

Washa Matumaini

That  is Swahilli for "to ignite hope." 

Every single person on this earth needs hope and every single person on this earth can ignite it. 

When I went to Tanzania the summer after I graduated from high school, the people there who had nothing, but had everything, ignited hope in my life. I found hope in their smiles. In the sunrise over Mt kilmanjaro in the fact that we were able to love each other despite the language barriers. 

Don't lose your chance. we're not guaranteed tomorrow. 

Love is the answer. 

Additionally, before I sign off, I want to say this. Zach will never be replaced in my life. Sure, I expect to find someone I can love again, but they will not replace Zach. Zach will be on my mind until the day I die. I know that I will live my life having "What If" thoughts that will never go away, no matter how wonderful my life might end up being. Please don't confuse my musings about the future as impatience to replace Zach. It simply cannot be done. He was, as I've said before, unlike anyone I've ever known and I don't expect to know another like him. He was, also, while he was here, my future. My life. My what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted more than anything you can imagine to have his children. To be his wife. To share my first home with him. To share everyday I had left with him. I often wished on shooting stars, on eyelashes, on 11:11s, to die with him, so that I would never have to know life without him.  But as life has taken these dreams from us, because they were shared dreams, the optimist in me can't help but focus on what I have left to look forward to.

I loved Zach with everything I had. I am still loving him, though it makes me feel so hopeless. I gave him all of me. I did not hide from him. I was more honest with him than I often am with myself. I trusted him fully with my heart and my future. Long before we moved in together, I even wrote my mother an e-mail telling her that Zach was the one. That I fully intended to marry him.

This life I have now, as you may well be aware, is not what I wanted. But what can I do? I can't bring him back. I can only grieve. I can only mourn. I read something in Dideon's Magical Thinking last night that disturbed me, because I think it's what's happening to me. Here, I'll find it and record it for you, but first, some background. Dideon's daughter, Quintana, was in the hospital at UCLA unconscious with some crazy brain bleeding that happened. When Dideon talks about her recovering, she's talking about Quintana's recovering from this injury:

     "She (Quintana) was reaching a point at which she would need once again to be, if she was to recover, on her own.
      I determined to spend the summer reaching the same point.
      I did not yet have the concentration to work but I could straighten my house, I could get on top of things, I could deal with my unopened mail.
      That I was only now beginning the process of mourning did not occur to me.
      Until now I had been able to only grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention. Until now there had been every urgent reason to obliterate any attention that might otherwise have been paid, banish the thought, bring fresh adrenaline to bear on the crisis of the day. I had passed an entire season during which the only words I allowed myself to truly hear were recorded: Wel-come to U-C-L-A.
      I began."

When I read that last night, I thought to myself, "She's right. I have only been grieving. I have not yet begun to mourn. Not truly." And that's scary to realize, because it means that I have so much more to go through, to face. We all do. Sigh. Le sigh to the highest heavens for a million years and you may begin to touch on what I'm feeling.

There's other topics I'd like to explore. Like, for example, how clamped up I'm becoming around the boys. How similar I'm becoming to the Juliana who was mourning Samantha, but I'd like to think about it a little more before discussing it with you all.

Good news to be had, though. The sun is shining outside. Granted, cloud coverage is pretty heavy still and it's not pure sunlight, but it's still sunlight. And it still helps to banish weary, woeful feelings. Today, if I do not ride my bike, I will at least read another story. I look forward to it greatly.