October 31, 2001 - 12.11 pm
Wow. I've had this diary for about a year now. Amazing. Also amazing how far this one year has taken me.
One year ago today, I was flying back to Nebraska from home after a wonderful, turbulant weekend. I remember wishing with all my might that I didn't have to go back, that I could just stay. And now, I'm writing from Boulder Colorado, where I go to school. The then me and the now me are so different. And I'm glad I've rounded that bend.
Jesse's two year anniversary was Monday. It was a quiet, introspective day for me, a rough one. I got a call from his folks telling me they'd rented his appartment, which I didn't want to hear. I can't think of those walls any other way, or that corner without the green, squishy chair, or any sound but piano music and laughter coming from it. I'm having a really tough time actually dealing with someone else living there. It had to happen at some point though, you know? It's an appartment in Manhattan, not something you come by easily. I miss Jesse. I've said that enough, but I feel sort of like I'm not doing his memory justice. Like I'm not fighting hard enough, or doing enough for anyone but myself. I'm not sharing my story or his outside of Laine. I'm not becoming a doctor to find a cure, and I'm not becoming a lawyer to advocate. I just feel like I'm not doing enough. I guess that probably stems from my feelings that I didn't do enough during his life that I feel like I need to change the world after his death. We met too young. If we met now I feel like I'd be in a better place to help him, or at least to be with him while he died, and to have spent more time with him while he lived. But now, he's gone. Brian's gone and it feels like that phase of my life has vanished, almost like it never existed. I haven't any tangible memories, and there's no one I can talk to about them that knew them, that remembers them. I talk to Laine, but only sort of because it's not like we can swap stories and I can't even communicate everything about them and about the entire experience that I want to communicate in words. And it makes her so sad. I don't want to make her sad, because there is so much in our lives that deserves happiness and joy and that deserves those feelings fully, not with that backwash taste of sadness.
I don't really know where I'm going. Here's to another year, I guess. :)
Emily
