I have taken myself back countless times to Daniel and I’s first meeting, May 28th, 2011. I had just turned twenty-one a few months prior. My best friend and I were dancing on a table and fell off in our drunken, ridiculous stupor. I remember a hand reaching down and as I looked up I seen the most beautiful, cocky grin looking back down at me. It belonged to Daniel Brown. A twenty five year old man who at that point had been fighting addiction for seven years already. Though looking at his perfect, beautiful little grin, you’d never know. I certainly didn’t. I reached back and well, that’s where the story of us begins.
I’m not quite sure what I believe since losing Daniel, except that the Bible is a very tricky document. I haven’t got a clue where or what eternity actually is. I do think that sometimes he is with me though, like I can feel him around me but I can not see him. I feel already in just the fifteen months he’s been gone, there are things about him that have already faded from memory. No matter how tightly I’ve held on. Just recently I realized I’ve forgotten what it feels like to kiss him. Something so simple. I stared at his picture trying to will myself to remember but for the life of me, I cannot. It is true what they say about grief, you do learn to live it. Find a way to carry it, day in and day out. Sometimes it feels crazy that I carry the amount of grief I do daily. I have come to learn the important stuff stays though. It lingers with us. It’s a part of us. We are no longer the same without them and that’s okay. That’s how it’s suppose to be. Because honestly, would we really want to be?
I do not know any of your worlds. We all have very different reasons for why our journey down griefs treacherous road began. Some of us knew this road was coming while others, myself included, were blindsided by it. I do not presume I can say anything that will reach any of you, as I’m just a small town girl writing about death online. Yet looking at all I’ve put out there these last fifteen months I suppose it’s not really been about death at all, it’s about life. There may be those who do not understand my pain, I’m thankful they don’t. I can only offer up my own experiences, in hopes it can help open up the conversation about addiction and show the humanity behind the addict. The beauty in the addict. In hopes of changing the road for someone, somewhere.
There is a flicker of hope that comes alive when I remember where I’ve come from, what I’ve come through and that surprising myself even, I’ve chosen to live for me. Pausing as I look back reflecting on it all. Taking a moment in an act of witnessing, of paying homage to a version of myself that I no longer recognize. That version of myself that died as I became the person I am now. The person who, though I may have risen like a Phoenix, cannot forget the ashes of loss in which I rose from. Because if I ignore the soot, the resurrection is meaningless.
Oh and I take that other statement back, God just placed this on my heart to share with you.