J.M.M.

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially."

Some days are not so hard and other days are. Yesterday was a really good day and I didn't have to hold myself together along the giant faultlines running through my soul. And today I found an Easter card from my sister that had been in some trash I hadn't bothered to take out months ago and for once I was so happy about my laziness. I couldn't bring myself to read it though, I don't know why. I opened it and saw her handwriting and put it away in the section of my accordion file labelled "Jenny."

There aren't a lot of times to cry when you are sharing a two-bedroom apartment with a shiftworker and a student. I cry in the shower sometimes, maybe about once a week by now.

Jenny was such a good person. She always wanted to make everyone happy, and she always did what she thought was right. Sometimes the worst of it is the unfairness; she was on her way to a vacation she'd been looking forward to for weeks and she worked so hard and couldn't she have just gotten to enjoy the vacation?

But there's no point in thinking like that really. We wouldn't be any less sad if she'd been on her way back, and if there's any God at all, she's in heaven now and that's better than any vacation.

Now we're left to put glue on the cracks somehow, to try to remember that scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue, to keep on living. It doesn't hurt as much now as it did last month, and next month it will hurt less, and one day I'll be able to remember the happy things without thinking about the pain.