Dear Alex, I've changed.

23rd July 2013

Dear Alex,

Sitting in the garden for almost the last time for another year. The weather now grey, my thoughts reaching only to you now. I miss you too much.

My body doesn't know how to react. My nerves and heart have been all over the place since I left. 

Although I've changed.

Since your accident, since the last time I was here, I have changed.

Not just physically, although I have gained 7 kilos. But in all things. My thoughts, the way I cope, the way I am, the way I do things. 

The shock has petered out, the crash so sudden, the ripples are evident, I ride them, with that much more control. Knowing my emotions, knowing the moments I must let go, the moments I need to hold on and never let go.

Although I still can't believe you had the accident, that this is life as we know it now. It's not a shock to me very minute, every second of everyday, as I say, it's more like I ebb through ripples. 

At times I feel I will drown, I feel so violently the cascades of fear and sadness and grief of missing you. But I am strong enough now to say to myself now that you are how you are and I am dealing with it through the heaviest of emotions.

I know what I know now. I know I have become independent, dealt with a hideous tragedy and deal with everyday the consequences, for nearly two years. I see the people who go out of their way to be by my side, those who dip in and out as it is convenient at their time in their life. Those who live their lives and carry on living them. Those who remain true, who remain present and think they do nothing, although their very presence, the fact I know I can just cry or laugh or be with them, because they take the time to be with me, they take their time to think of me.

My friends in france feel an impotence, but even they don't realise what they do in thinking of me, raising money to bring me over to france to be looked after by them. How I love these friends here, how I will miss them again...keeping the contact at a distance, boasting me when I need it via Skype!

I know who I am. 

I know what I know.

I know how often my path changes and how it busts me for a day, then I force myself back. I accept the different route I now have to go.

And those kids of ours Alex, they will never know how, through their smile, their laughs, their tears, their tantrums, their fights, their sharing and their kindness, their strength, incomparable, their beauty, their delight, their childlike minds, that from their hairs on their head to the tips of their toes, they give me a strength, a force that I would never have had had it not been for them.

Every single day I do not get up from my bed till I have given thanks and praise for them.

A day or so now till I get back to you... A day or so now till I have you in my arms, till I feel you, see you again.

Me xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx