525,600 Minutes. Over 1,100 cups of coffee. 100’s of tears. Hours of laughter. 365 midnights.

In some ways, it feels likes it’s been years. At the same time, it feels like I just woke up to the new reality, a life without you in it. I’ve wanted to talk to you a thousand times. To tell you about the progress I’ve made, and the hits I’ve taken.

They say that the first year is the hardest. I can’t say for sure because I don’t have a frame of reference. But I know that this has been the hardest, and shortest, and longest year of the thirty-four years I’ve been on this floating rock.

Grief has been a tool for me. It has magnified the cracks and fissures in my life, and forced the eviction of the things in my life that no longer suited me.

I spent the year and a half since you left reflecting… reading your books, listening to music that reminds me of you. I wanted to know the man you never let me know.

I honored you. And I resented you.

I got to know grief. And I’d like to think I got a better understanding of you, and in effect, myself… and who I want to be.

At first I thought you are only supposed to think fondly on those you’ve lost, reflecting on them in the most pleasant light. But when I tried that, it made me resent you more.

The lessons I learned from you have fed my growth, they have hurt and healed, and ripped back open unexpectedly. Grief is funny that way, just when you think it’s a scar, you find out it’s still a wound.

I miss you terribly, even still. I love you and I hate you. And I would still give anything to help you.