I can't hold it in anymore. I can't pretend like what happened the night before her seizure simply did not occur. Her family said that they didn't want anyones perception of her to change. I don't care anymore. I am holding this in and it is absolutely killing me. Ignoring what happened is just as bad as ignoring her epilepsy and pretending like she didn't have that either. I have had these thoughts lately that what happened to her was essentially suicide. That she knew she was doing something that was a great risk to her health, and her life. I can't get past the fact that she knew she was taking her life in her hands, and that she was always a greater risk for seizure if she had any alcohol. Not only did she drink the night before, but her step sister decided to put her in a situation in which there were people doing large amounts of cocaine. In a matter of weeks from when she moved out of SB and to LA did she go from living a healthy, albeit difficult, life to snorting coke with her step sister and ultimately killing herself in the process. Her cause of death was overdose. Even though she drowned in the tub of the shower, the amount of cocaine found in her body led the medical examiner to conclude that it was an fucking overdose that killed her. My miss. She was not a drug user. She was strong and knew the dangers of her epilepsy. I will never understand how this happened. How things changed so drastically in such a short amount of time, leaving me here to deal with it. And I will never understand nor forgive her step sister for aiding in the process. For being so ignorant and without any sense of obligation or responsibility.

Much of what I write here consists of the same. Over and over and over again, I either write about how much it hurts, how I don't understand, or the overall disbelief for the entire situation. She is still gone. It is still unfair. It still hurts. I still miss her. I still can't believe that she won't pick up my call, and her phone has been turned off for quite some time now. I still don't understand how she could have been so stupid that night. She was so selfish to leave me here to deal with this. I was told that it would take a year for me to get through the grief. Well, it has been one year and 4 days since she died and I am at home, crying once more.

I did not go to the cemetery today. Instead I drove up the coast to Santa Barbara, and drove through the city remembering her in every place imaginable. From the house on San Pascual, where she came over the first night with Piper while I was living with Josh. I drove to Chapala and Fig, and watched people get off the bus imagining and remembering what it was like to see her get off the 24X with her sunglasses on, always smiling and happy to see me. I drove to the house in West Beach, where we spent so many lazy days together. The tree that was struck by lightning years ago during a particularly stormy winter has since recovered. I went and visited 1134 Garden, and saw her opening our window to toss the keys down for me to open the front door. I noticed the prius taxi that would drive us around and heard her say "red to garden," because she thought that it was so funny that she was in on the taxi lingo. I watched couples walking down State St. on their way to the farmers market. I watched as they held hands and enjoyed the first few days of fall. I drove up to the Mesa to Elise Way. One of the last memories I have of her is standing outside of 2059 Elise Way, watering the flowers in the front yard in her red bikini. I sat and cried in my car as I looked at the front lawn of that house, and noticed that the flowers she watered that afternoon are gone. I drove through the city over and over, and on each new corner I passed a memory that had faded was there again in my mind. From the rainy night we walked to the italian restaurant on lower state, to riding our bikes to butterfly beach. I have used Santa Barbara as an instrument of pain the past year. Each time I feel her fading, I drive up the coast and thrust myself into these memories. More and more time passes between my visits, and I hope that one day I can go up there and not feel pain and simply enjoy the beautiful nature of the town. One day.

Tomorrow will be one year. I have been dreading, and to some extent, avoiding the thoughts of what this day means. Of the thoughts and memories it brings up. For the past year, I have been able keep telling myself, "oh, last year at this time we were in santa barbara" or "we were driving up pch" or even knowing that she was alive and in the hospital. Tomorrow will mark the last day that I can say those things. The last day actually begins the day before. Saturday afternoon. I walked into her hospital room, as I did everyday, and knew that something was wrong. When I say wrong, I mean that I could tell that her fever had risen, and as I wiped the sweat from her face and forehead the only thing I could think of was how are we going to get this fever down. Her blood was infected and she was less than 36 hours away from dying and the only thing I thought was wrong was that her body temperature had risen a little. I will never forget how the sweat drained from her body. All my life playing sports, and watching sports on television, I have never seen anyone sweat as much as she did that day. She was drenched. I kept drying her off, thinking that a cold rag would keep her cool. I told the nurse that we needed to give her tylenol to help with the fever. The nurse just looked at me unaffected, and I am sure she is used to giving tylenol to patients in an effort to appease loved ones last ditch hopes. I stayed with her that day for as long as I possibly could. No one else saw her that day. I woke up early Sunday and went straight to the hospital. As I entered the room, she was elevated in her bed, sweating again, and shaking. She spent the entire time in the coma in constant motion but today it was much more violent. I imagine angels in the room with her that day, standing by her side, shaking the last bit of life out of her so she would finally be able to rest. There were 6 or 7 nurses and doctors running throughout the room, and this is when I knew that I wasn't going to be able to get her fever down. I was the first one in the room that day, and by nightfall I was kissing her forehead and telling her goodbye for the last time.

Very close to one year passing. I think of her now and she is so distant. And to think that I didn't even know what had happened to her until over a day after it happened. I will never forgive those people who kept that from me. How fucking dare they. How fucking dare they do that to me. How fucking evil and without a fucking soul.

I just want to be happy again. It's almost been a year since she left SB, and I am amazed that I am still here today. I just sit and realize what I have endured, the strength it has taken to push forward each day, and don't know how much longer I can do it for. Everything, and I mean everything, is muted now. I thought for a while that it was the depression, but now am fearful that it may never change. That this ache will never lift, and I will forced to live with this terrible affliction until the day I die. In many ways, this is much worse than those really dark days I had to live through in the months past. At least then I could feel the intensity and the depth. Now I am just stricken with this fucking headache that wont subside. The memories that were once so vivid in my mind have faded, which just enforces the cruelty that those who are left here have to deal with everyday. I really don't know how much longer I can live without being truly happy anymore. When does this make me stronger? When will I become a better person because of this? When will I have proof that she is living with me and through me? When will I have the answer and reason for this?

I had the most amazingly powerful dream a few nights ago. I was in a movie theatre, and everyone seemed like they were fake except there was was a girl in the theatre without any discernable features, or age. She told me she had been looking for me and and asked me to catch her. She kept falling back backwards asking me to catch her. Over and over again I caught her, until her body fell through me, as if she had no physical attributes at all. Yet she slammed to the ground, and everyone in the theatre gasped and stared at the body on the ground. As she fell through me, another part of her rose up into the air, carrying me, through the roof of the theatre and into the sky. I was the only person who was not paying attention to the girl who slammed on the ground and only cared about how I was being carried away.

I have taken quite a bit of time away from writing here. I don't know why. With each season that passes, it is yet another reminder of this cyclical world for which we endure. Summer faded to Fall, and I experienced winter in Mexico, a bitter cold that refutes any standard belief that Mexico is strictly Cabo or Cancun in nature. I have returned to California as spring approaches. I remember feeling the temperature change while she was in the hospital. The difference between the warm air during the month of July to the cool evenings I spent at the hospital in September.

I never said thank you or I love you enough. Thank you Meliss. Thank you for the way you would hold my hand, for the way you would laugh at me, for the way you used to say 'oh my god' everytime you would cuddle next to me. Thank you for sleeping with me in that twin bed for months and months, not even caring about the size, because you simply remarked 'well, ill just sleep on top of you, we'll be fine'. Thank you for dealing with me. Thank you for every kiss. And your laugh. Everything you did made me feel so uniquely special. I never thought I would be able to have love, and friendship as I did with you. Thank you. I can't cry hard enough now that you are gone. I never imagined that this amount of emotion would exist amongst humans. There are days that I wish I never met you. The hard days, that is. Just so I would be spared the ocean of tears that keeps pouring out of me. I refuse to let go of you. I just don't know what to grasp. I love you. I hope one day I will see you again. Yours,

al

I stopped writing here, and it has to be because everytime I come to this site, it brings up so many feelings from the past 6 months that I am trying to ignore. It reminds me of the tears that would pour out of me as I sat and typed. Words that were true to how I felt at that moment. I met a girl tonight. We were at Arsenal, on Pico. She is cute, her style is of my liking. Our conversation started off quite well. A little chit, a little chat. The conversation ended when this occurred. (see below).

me: Oh, by the way, my name is Alejandro, I don't think I introduced myself.
her: It's ok....My name is Melissa.

I'm going to sleep now.

It is after 4 am on jan 15th 2008. She’s dead. On September 23rd 2007 she died. I still sit awake at night saying that over and over, in disbelief. I am forgetting things about her now, and pound my head with my hand in disgust. For thinking about something other than her, I sob. Tears run down my face like raindrops flowing down the windshield of a car. It is uncontrollable. I hate myself for not treating her like I should have at times. The guilt overwhelms my body and seeps from my pores. How do I tell her I am sorry. I am so sorry. Words cannot explain, do justice, or even remotely illuminate how sorry I am. I love you.

I am driving to Santa Barbara this afternoon.  Just thinking about being there is making me cry, but I need to do it.  The farmers market is today, it seems like its been years since we walked down garden st, over to state and 4 blocks down to get vegetables, cilantro, and flowers.  She always held the bag of cilantro separately so she could smell it on our way home. 

 I hope I am strong enough to do this.