Anniversaries

Today I turned twenty three. I have mixed feelings about my birthday. I used to love birthdays, and I still get those feelings. The attention is part of it but I also just feel accomplished like I made it through another year and that is actually a pretty big deal for me. Three years ago my thoughts around my birthday changed pretty dramatically. Three years ago on October 6th a boy I had known since I was five took his own life. It effected me in a way I couldn't have imagined. We had been friends in elementary school and occasional friends, and occasional antagonists in junior high and high school. I hadn't talked to him in two years, but his death broke me down. The day he died I went to work stacking books in the library and halfway through my shift I lay on the floor and cried in the stacks when no one was there. I spent the next two months hiding. I retreated from the world I had no idea how to deal with what I was feeling. I was angry at Brad for dying, I felt so guilty that I couldn't help him and that he had died and I hadn't. I had made it through my roughest patches. In December I went to the school counsellor, I talked about it and I got better, eventually. When the anniversary comes around I get thrown back into the space I was in during that time I cry until the tears won't come anymore. I have moved on, but that experience shook my foundations. I have come out of it different than I was before some of my most fundamental beliefs shifted in the time it took me to get back on my feet again. So this time of year this anniversary, it's hard. I am brought back to a place of grief and have to take time to heal again.

Allysa