1 year is 3 decades

there's no way to put anything other than the end as the end. there are no postscripts or epilogues that can continue ad infinitum. there is always a last word, a last period, a last page.

for almost 30 years each day that was supposed to celebrate a beginning felt a little bit more like celebrating an end. and it wasn't a good end. it wasn't a heartwarming conclusion where someone walks off into the sunset, or vanquishes the enemy, or learns, laughs, loves. it was just an end to nothing. a tiny, barely luminescent flame finally extinguished.

but i suppose, like all things, environments can change. what for 20-odd years was one story was replaced by another. a new narrative, a new cover, a new ending. the ending isn't soon now, it's  not a cold, grey sunday in february of 2019. but that's where it began. it wasn't a sunday, but it was cold, and it was grey, and that didn't matter. maybe it never did.

she told me that i wasn't turning 30. that i was really only one. that what had happened was a life i no longer lived, a person i slowly shed. and she was right. i was so fixated on the story being the same, on the end being plotted out in outlines and notes and mental constructions, that i didn't realize maybe it could change, maybe there would be an epilogue, maybe the epilogue would be longer than the story, maybe there was a sequel, maybe there was just more, more, more.

because someone cares now. and maybe i don't, fully, maybe i will never quite view my body as a sanctuary, or temple, or something to protect and cherish. but someone else does. and as she whisked you away from place to place, feeling to feeling, smile to smile, on a day i knew, knew, knew would be my last, no intrusive thoughts entered. just the warm water on my skin of a swimming pool, the sound of my favorite musical, the taste of her lips on mine, and her smile, so bright it showed the rest of the story for me, lighting the way, piercing whatever grey nightmare a michigan winter had thrust on us.