At first, you hate the mornings.  The morning is just one more chance to wake up, sleepy eyed and bed headed, to realize that you’re still living the same nightmare as the day before.

Then, after a handful of mornings, you start to specifically just hate the Saturday ones.  The Saturday mornings are an indication that it’s been another week.  Another collection of mornings.

Then after you lose track of how many Saturdays it has been, when the weather has changed, somewhere around maybe 12-14, you decide that you hate the 15th.

And then one day.  The ever-dreaded-15th is the marker of a year.  And you start to hate the years.

If I’ve learned anything in the last five, it’s that the anticipation is worse than the actual day.  It is always going to be worse in your head.  The day before is going to be more terrible than the ‘day’ you’ve been dreading.  But it doesn’t make it any easier when you’ve collected FIVE years.  One thousand, eight hundred and twenty six of those awful mornings.  Five full years.

One of the first nights I was back in Bethlehem after Jesse died, I walked a few blocks to get some air.  As I made it back to the alley behind our apartment, it started to snow, out of nowhere.  There I was, in an alleyway, alone, cold, tired, and empty… and in the blink of an eye the sky opened up and the snow was floating so gently to the ground as I started to walk through the lot behind our place.

I started to cry.  Pretty uncontrollably.  And about 32 seconds later I stepped on black ice and fell on my ass so hard that I cried even more. It was that moment that I thought maybe it was Jesse giving me a swift kick in the ass.  I still think it was.

FIVE YEARS.  I still don’t know how I will handle big, emotional, anniversary-type dates.  So leading up to today, I had a lot of thoughts.  I wrote a lot.  Predicted a lot.  Slept a lot (it’s exhausting, still, at times). But I didn’t know what the 15th would be like.

I drove a lot this morning and the entire way I felt this enormous, overwhelming, sense of guilt and gratitude.

A strange combination, no?

Guilt that in the last five years, I’ve lived a similar life, but have changed in 1,000 ways. Guilt that I really like the person I’ve become.  Guilt that I disappeared from friendships that I felt I couldn’t focus on.  Guilt over the people I should have called in the last five years. Guilt that I’ve been insanely happy.  Guilt that I could have done something, a million things, differently.

And yet, gratitude.

I’ve had the overwhelming and amazing opportunity to see the very, very, best in so many people over the last five years.  People who stopped everything for me.  People who went out of their way on mundane Tuesdays because they knew it wasn’t a typical Tuesday for me. I felt gratitude that I’ve met so many more incredible people over the last five years and that I’ve been the best version of me for them to meet.  Gratitude that I am where I am.  Gratitude for the life I get to live and the people I get to share it with.

FIVE YEARS.

There was no notification on my phone.

No event on the calendar.

No one announcing “brace for impact” the way I assume they do in a plane crash or in some sort of grey’s anatomy-esque ferry crash.

Jesse, I’ve thought about you for one thousand, eight hundred, and twenty six days.  Every. Single. Day.   I’ve cried on the very best days of my life, looking at the most beautiful sunsets, in the most incredible places on this globe completely heart broken thinking about how you’ll never experience these things and wondering what I could’ve done for you.  I’ve been angry and mad and sad and furious and emotional and weepy.  But all in all, I hope you understand the life I’m living and that I make you proud in some strange, after life, way.

As I drove back into Bethlehem this morning, I got off at the exit for Lehigh University, as I did so many times when I visited in college.  I was listening to the “Rockin’ Christmas” Pandora Station (judge me) when all of a sudden it began to snow.

As ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ ended, a song I have never heard started to play.  I looked down and it was called Bloom, by the Paper Kites. Strange, because Jesse and I had made paper airplanes together the night before he died.  Stranger because the lyrics were as followed…

P.S. If you’ve read all of this, do me a favor.  Make a donation of $5 to one of the following organizations in Jesse’s memory.

The Herren Project –   http://www.theherrenproject.org/support/

Lehigh Valley Health Network Bereavement Services – legitimately saved my life by providing free grief counseling services. Select “other” and type in Bereavement.

Lehigh University/ Delta Chi – select “areas of your choice”, select fraternities, select Delta Chi.