kelland

Everything ends.

(Yes, this post is going to be inspired by the series finale of Six Feet Under.)

How can you really ever be angry with anyone when you stop and consider for a second... eventually that person will die. Eventually, you will lose everything that means anything to you. And no, that is not meant to depress you or make life seem bleak and meaningless. Life is anything but. Life is important. Everyone's. Everything is important. You sitting there alone in the bathroom stall crying about the boy that will never love you back. You lying on a stale mattress in the emergency room counting backwards, waiting to fall asleep and wake up afraid. You and me and this mess that we're in and you gripping his hand when you honestly know better. You and your financial disaster and your inability to keep the family comfortable. You and your entangled profession and lack of dreams. Everything is important. Everything is so much more important when you realize that everything ends.

All of my rage and my bitterness dissolves when I try to imagine a life without you... Mom. Dad. Friend. Lover. Grandma and Grandpa and people that, in high school, I don't really care to know. Under the giant magnifying glass of life, arguments and disagreements and separations are so small. I want to tell you that I'm so sorry. That I wish I was a bigger person and a better person for everyone else and not even myself.

I look at my face in the mirror and I'm unsatisfied with what I see until I consider the day that I'm decaying and unloved and ultimately alone instead of young and heartfelt and connected.

Today, right now, before I know what the world is made of and before I fall in-love for real and taste true disappointment when it splatters on the sidewalk and before I lose my first real job and before I'm told that I'm not smart enough or good enough for this place and before someone who brought me into the world as a charming young woman passes on, I need to be grateful.

Thank you for supporting me and telling me that I am a beautiful, strong sister. Thank you for letting me become my own person and for always showing me off as the daughter for which you have so much pride. Thank you for not sheltering the world from my eyes and showing me what's beneath the surface, Virginia and Lowell. Thank you Sara and Tegan and Kevin and Kati and Damein and Seth and Jessica and Nevin. And others whom I've clumsily forgotten. You break my heart and you build it back up so it has character and endurance. That is not a bad thing anymore.

I love you. And I am a very lucky person. Thank you.

"Remember those posters that said, 'Today is the first day of the rest of your life'? Well, that's true of every day but one - the day you die." - American Beauty