Despite the time that's passed, I can't stop myself from wanting to believe that she's just off at college, and I'll see her over the holidays. We'll go to the gym together, and make fun of my dad for wearing fleece zip-up vests and Birkenstocks.
It's fucking unfair.
Sometimes I feel like there's a perpetual dark cloud hanging over my head, and no matter how much light I'm surrounded by, this shadow is always blocking the warmth.
The self-centered little girl inside of me is constantly asking, "Why me? Why do these bad things always happen to me?" Truth be told, sometimes, I want to wallow in her words. I want to swim in the vast ocean of self-pity, but I choose not to. Because if I'm going to swim in that ocean, I better get in line. There's a whole collection of nations who have experienced more heartache than I could ever imagine. Families across the globe who know things about loss that I will never understand.
But that doesn't make losing Stephanie any less devastating, or any less important than the millions of other children who have died from circumstances that were not only preventable, but didn't need to happen in the first place. And while I don't believe in a heaven, or the fiery inferno of "hell," I do believe that the massive amount of energy that flows through each and every one of us, has to go somewhere once our hearts stop beating.
I don't know where the charged groupings of electrons escape too, but I would like to believe that they stick around and disperse into the air. I would like to believe that the energy from everyone who has ever passed, fills the atmosphere, and surrounds all of us in microscopic molecular patterns that can occasionally be observed in split second glances when we accidentally fall into the right frequency.
I'm aware at how insane the above theory sounds, but haven't you ever been in your head all day, and seen a shadow out of the corner of your eye that you could have sworn was a person? Haven't you ever felt someone behind you, only to turn and find that you're all alone? I'm not pontificating on whether or not “ghosts” exist, I'm talking about energy. I'm talking about that moment when the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, because you feel a draft in a windowless room.
The brain is such a powerful generator, I suppose there is a more likely chance that these notions of energy interference are explainable by the great depths our minds will travel, just to cope with the intense emotional blender loss generates.
I don't care though. Right now, the rational juxtaposition is worthless to me. Because despite the facts, I want to believe that when I miss my mother, and I close my eyes to picture her face, that her energy is somewhere close, somewhere near me. I want to believe that when I focus in on the memory of her hand touching my forehead, brushing the hair off my cheek, the fragment of time where I can almost feel her next to me, is actually real. That when I think I can smell her skin, or see the outline of her frame, it isn't just my imagination, but a little piece of the molecular pattern her shell was constructed of.
So, whether or not it's “crazy,” or “stupid,” or simply “false,” I not only want to believe it, I need to believe it. I need to believe for that split second, her energy was there, and I could feel it because I fell onto it's frequency. I need to believe that it wasn't all for nothing.
I need to believe that when I'm driving down my parents street, and the wind hits my face with that perfect smell of fall on its coat tails, Stephanie is there too... spread out and dispersed in the atmosphere, circulating through the seasons, in and out of lungs across the world.
I need to believe it, not because it's necessarily true, but because it means something to me.
What is any of this worth if it doesn't mean something, if it doesn't matter?
So Stephanie, where ever your dispersed carbon and molecular pattern has floated off too, and whatever frequency you might be traveling within, I love you, and you are missed with every ounce of blood, bone, and sinew inside me.
You are missed with every fragment of every second that has passed since you've been gone.
You are missed more than any words from any language could ever accurately convey.
♥ Stephanie Michelle Proctor ♥
October 18, 1986- October 2, 2006
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