One year has passed today, one year since you took your last breath on this earth. A whole planet-full of anguish has been left in that wake. You would have been 23; a full month older than I am. No longer is such. You’re frozen; forever young at 22.

They told me time would ease the pain, and I guess they meant the physical display of hurt. I don't burst into tears every time I see a Steelers logo or find myself suddenly breathless whenever I hear a song that you loved. No, I am not that same mess of a girl that existed last December. I do not look like her, but she's still present within me.
The thing about time is that the pain never really dissipates; you just unearth ways to tolerate it. Ways to function around it. I am able now to maintain a smile on my face whenever I need be, and a small, invisible part of myself can curl into the crook of my head and weep. I numb myself and place the pain on the back-burner, to deal with it later.

One year, come and gone. One year without you.

One full year I've wandered around until my feet were bruised; until my shoes were breaking. Wandering and not perceptive to what I was looking for. I know now that you are the destination.
I'll always be searching for you, and you'll never be there.
Because you're in the wind. You're in every kind gesture, in every hill and mountain I find beauty in. You're in the smile of your sister, the love of your mother and the memory of every family member or person who mourns you today.
And I mourn you so much. I never considered that this much sorrow could be coiled into one body so firmly. So crammed in that at times I spring a leak and you fracture forth like a rainbow on an oil spill. My mind circles back to you thousands of times in a single day, like a little determined moon circling the wake of her planet's obliteration.

I don't have a place to visit. At first, that was one of the hardest parts of moving on. By nature I am a wanderer, and in my travels I yearned for a place to stop; a place where you would be always.
You don't have a final resting place, and that's fine, I've accepted that now. It wouldn't have made sense with who you were as a person. You always were more like a force of nature than human- so beautiful, destructive and awing. So when I imagine you in the present tense, I like to think of the swirling dust devils that whirl leaves into miniature tornadoes. You had a playful spirit like that. I think of you in the wind that gusts paper from my hands, because you were always a joker. And I think of you as a warm breeze on a summer day because your warmth was something people sought out.

I'll continue writing for you, even though you'll never read it. I'll never stop loving you, and your memory is enough of a home for this wanderer.

To quote What Dreams May Come:
" I’ll cross whatever distance there is. I send you my love."

Forever and Ever, C.J.H.
-Sarah