In which I quote a lot of other people.

I had a really tough night last night.... Sometimes it just hits you, and the pain that you can so often soften or push away  or distract yourself from overwhelms you. I think I felt it coming all day... thus my mad list of things from yesterday... I managed to keep it at bay nearly all day... but then the night came and I couldn't focus on anything else, and most of my friends were gone or busy... Luckily I found one friend who was online and able to pull me down from the worst of it... It's so much easier  for me to focus on people rather than television or books or even writing. But before I found someone to talk to...for over an hour I just cried and cried and *felt* it. So intense that it actually is a physical pain in that spot right below my breastbone that feels like my center. I was in the midst of "an avalanche of grief." (Someone else's words, not mine.) It's healing to grieve... but this was so much.

Then last night I had a dream... That one of my good friends died in a car accident... and that Nathan came back to life. I even remember saying, "Thank goodness we didn't do an autopsy." I didn't know what to do with my guilt in the dream... the guilt that my husband had come back, when someone else had died... But I was so happy, and not at all concerned that Nathan had suddenly been raised. I think I might read too many vampire books.

Sometimes I forget... and if I forget I *know* that other people do, too... but it's been less than a month... I'm handling it all so "well" that the times when I just get overwhelmed surprise me. Washington Irving says that, “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are messengers of overwhelming grief...and unspeakable love.” 

No I don't know the context of that quote... actually I only found that quote because I was looking for this quote which I read or heard somewhere lately :

“The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief -
But the pain of grief
Is only a shadow
When compared with the pain
Of never risking love.”
-Hilary Stanton Zunin, Author of The Art of Condolence

I believe that... This hurts... so often and so suddenly... But I also believe in true love, because of Nathan. I *know* that it exists and it happens to ordinary people, and that sometimes it hits you like a stack of mattresses and sometimes it comes sneaking up "on little cat feet," and I can't imagine the person I would be now if I'd spent all this time not knowing that. Epic love isn't "epic" for how it comes into your life, but for how it remains and for your commitment to it.

Ok one last quote... "I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you not only for what you have made of yourself, but for what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out." - Roy Croft

I got the paper today about renewing my lease... such bad timing. I don't want to move out in May... but I'm not really sure if I want to stay here for another whole year and the "per month" prices are insane. I love living next to Kara.... Becca kept saying my life is like college because I live so close to my friends and see them all the time... but moving would make me go through a lot of this *stuff* and get rid of it... Plus, from a  purely practical standpoint I have some of the cheapest rent in town, and until I figure out what I'm going to be doing to make enough money to support myself, I probably shouldn't commit to a higher rate. Maybe I should see if the apartment on the other side of Josh and Kara is opening up...  You think that my  landlord would let me move two doors down? Gosh... the decisions never end.

Also I just edited the HTML on my blog to get rid of some weird formatting issues that happened in this post... I think I'm a rockstar computer genius.