1262

1. When people meet you, they tell me that they understand me more. Even a year after things have ended; probably even years after. How is it that someone can know me, if they know you?

2. Today, I long for home, and that is why I cannot see you. If you hold me in your arms while I am sad, I am afraid that you will become my home. I cannot part with so many homes, so often.

3. I think my heart grew tired of thinking about you. Like one day it just dropped everything and said: "Enough is enough!"

Enough is enough.

1260

In two weeks, I will leave, and when I come back, everything will be different.
People who are close now will be faraway. Faraway friends will come home.
Home as I know it will be different. And maybe I will be different.
Everything will be different.

1259

Just because you bought into something that made you sick to your stomach does not mean that you do not deserve better. Just because someone told you, "You're really beautiful," only because he wanted something from you does not make that statement any less true.

1258

The night before you left, we ate together one last time, and I tried really hard not to cry into my dinner.
I was angry that we are not the kind of family that cries when people leave. But then I started to really listen to the conversation at the table:

"LA is really big. It'll take you an hour and a half to two hours to drive from one end to the other."
"Make sure you ask if you can check in another luggage."

"Eat more, son."
"Did you pack enough underwear?"

It was our way of saying, "You are loved. And we are going to miss you beyond imagination."

1257

Talking to a stranger about his ideas on how to improve Vancouver's transit system:

"What if it became normal to sit on each other's laps? Not only would that save space, but it would mean that we would be forced to communicate with people we don't know. It would mean no one would look down at their phones but actually talk with other human beings that are in front of them. What if instead of bus advertisements, we put up artwork? I used to steal these bus ads for fun, but wouldn't it be great if we could hop on the bus, take home a piece of art, and then put up our own for the world to see? Especially if it was kids' artwork. The bus would be a better place to be."

1256

This year is a year of waiting and wandering.
I've caught the travel bug so bad that I couldn't even tear myself away from downtown Bellingham.
But something about being away makes me want to plant my roots even deeper when I come back.

1253

1. The last few times I told you that I loved you, they sounded like apologies. It frustrates me that sometimes I still believe in a lie that tells me love is something to apologize for.

2. Sometimes I intentionally choose not to tell stories about my mom, because I am a writer and writers are told to be careful about the tenses in our stories. I can never decide whether to say "she was" or "she is" or "she would" or "she used to." But even I know that writers are allowed to bend the rules once we have learned them. Nobody really cares about consistent grammar when there is a story worth telling.

3. It makes me angry that somebody thinks they can tell you that the way you feel is not important. It makes me proud that you do not need their validation to choose to live a better life.

4. If I were a plant, I would thrive the best in hot and humid conditions.

1251

Things that make me angry/sad:

- We are studying in your apartment, and you look up at me and say, "Bekah, I'm really fucked up." While you are in the shower, I write you a letter with all the reasons why you are good, leave it on your pillow, and tell you to read it every night before you go to sleep. You thank me, but I know that you do not believe me.

- I wake up in the morning to 2 am texts that you are having another rough night. I call you to tell you that I love you and ask if you want me to come over. "It doesn't matter," you say. "You matter," I reply, and you laugh.

- We are out for dinner, and I tell you that I think your heart is heavy. You say that you don't want to talk about it, and I wonder if it's because you're afraid that I will get angry with you again. I'm sorry that sometimes my blood boils hotter than I mean to. 

1249

Last night I had sushi on The Drive with two strangers.
One was a small town, boarding school girl with wides eyes and a soft voice. She loved to talk with constant questions on her tongue and a tack in her fingers - always trying to pinpoint who you are before you can even show her. She reminded me of a deer with long legs and a quiet soul, but I think underneath, she secretly has a lion heart. I bet she is the type of girl who needs to sit on her hands to keep herself from reading the end of a book before she finishes it.
The other was a man with an adventurous spirit and shoulders wide enough to carry all of the things that he has seen. He holds words well in his mouth, has lips lined with wit, and is gifted in curling the corners of your smile towards the heavens. He wears his heart on his sleeve and drinks up good stories like he has been thirsty for a hundred years.
They were writers and storytellers, just like me. Over raw fish, we practiced our craft and jumped from comedy to drama to fiction. It was an evening of scratching surfaces and laughter, but also of peeling back layers and wanting to know and be known.
In my stage play class, I was taught that the job of a playwright is to change people and shed new light. I believe in this truth so strongly, and I want it to leak into everything that I write and see.

1248

3 exciting things that happened yesterday:

1. Jill and I made an appointment at The Fall Tattooing for this Wednesday! It's official!!! We'll be celebrating our birthdays with just a little bit of ink.

2. I was told that people see a difference in me. I was told that there is more than just happiness in me but there is joy underneath it all and that I have dealt with the passing of my mother with more hope than they have ever witnessed before. I wanted to cry and tell them that was the best compliment I have ever received, but more than that, I wanted to say to them, "I promise you that there is hope that triumphs even death. One day, I hope it will change you the way it changed me."

3. My father told me that he wanted to take a trip with me this reading break. It was the first time I had ever heard the words come out of his mouth: "Let's do something, just you and me." The idea of things being just him and me has been so daunting, because it had always been my mom and I, or him and my mom, or the three of us, but never just him and me. But I know there are good things waiting to happen there, and Jesus is saying to us, "Let me show you where I have already planted seeds."

1247

To the boy with fear in his heart -

I am sorry if you ever feel like your fear runs like a coal engine in the centre of your heart and drives things that you don't mean. I am sorry if you ever look at disappointment and feel as though you have swallowed a stone that presses against the walls of your stomach. I'm sorry if you ever see expectations, and you think of dust bunnies that turn into storm clouds. But I want you to know that another word for expectations is "hope," and where hope blooms and grows, fear will never be able to take full form. I promise you that hope is a seed that can grow into the ocean.

If you were a punctation mark, you would be a question mark, because you are unafraid to get your fingernails dirty when you are digging for more. And sometimes I like to act like a colon, because colons have important things to say and always know the reasons why, but I think I'm actually a set of parenthesis. I wish I could be a colon for the boy with the question mark lips, but I'm a set of parenthesis, because I know how to hold things. Sometimes, I have all the reasons why, but most of the time, all I have are bracket arms and the only thing I can do is hold you well.

1246

"From the very beginning, we have always said, 'You are going places.'"

1245

Two very unfortunate truths:

1. I am not just sad about my mother's passing. I am angry.

2. I am very afraid that nobody in this world will ever know me as well as she did.

1244

The first time I swam in the ocean, I felt like the water was crushing me.
I panicked when my feet could not touch the bottom, and I knew that no swimming pool was large enough to prepare me for feeling as small as I did in that moment.
The second time I swam in the ocean, I felt like the water was holding me.
I have heard that daredevils are born loving fear, and that was never something I could comprehend until I met the ocean skin-to-skin.

1243

People who leave -

3. You packed your bags a while ago and left town. I don't think about you anymore, but it still makes me happy that you put up the posters I gave you on your walls. It makes me feel like no one ever really gets "left behind."

2. I still remember when you used to look at me like I was Christmas morning. You left coffee cup rings on my heart, and I've been spending a bit too much time scrubbing them away.

1. Ever since you left, I've been extremely afraid of empty houses. I'm afraid of setting three plates and making my own turkey.
Did you leave or were you taken? Or is there something in between the cracks?

0. You do not leave. Nobody is ever left behind. You do not let anything fall through the cracks.

1242

Today, two people I really care about got married.
It was the best day.

1240

The last time my father kissed my mother, it was like he had a planted a stamp on her forehead and sent her off with a square-shaped conversation between his lips and her skin.
He signed the bottom of the letter with his fingertips against her wrists and wrapped her in an envelope of blankets.
He asked the messenger to keep her safe, and I bet you that if you unwrapped the folds, the pages would read:

"I love you, and I will see you again soon."

1239

Last week, we sat in a cafeteria booth with food on our tongues and Europe on our lips.
You asked me, "Why Bordeaux?"
And I said, "Because it's by the ocean."
You asked me, "Where do you want to go the most?"
And I said, "The Cliffs of Dover. And the coasts of Greece."
You laughed, which meant, "Why would you fly halfway across the world to see the ocean when you live right next to it?"
And I wanted to say, "Because when you love something, you want to see every inch of it."

1238

There is a stigma that when two people end a relationship, it is a failure, because you give away valuable parts of yourself and all you end up with are broken pieces.
But I want you to know that it is a lie.
There is nothing that you can give away that cannot be renewed.

Loving someone is never a failure.

1237

My mother looks like a soldier going to war with her gas mask on.
When she closes her eyes, the radius of my world gets smaller and smaller.
She draws everyone and everything inwards.

We still pray over meals.
And I speak images of her walking on water,
Because she is afraid of drowning in her own lungs.

I hear Him call her "Daughter, daughter" over and over again;
"Daughter" like the bleeding woman who was not afraid to ask for what she needed.
He reminds me not to be angry at a father who runs,
And to be joyful for fathers who do not.

When she closes her eyes, words that have passed through the roof of my mouth a million times get redefined:

home
hospital wards where you leave your toothbrush

accomplishment
eating a bowl of soup

breakthrough
medication to get you through the hour

mother
a title that is not limited to how many children a woman has by blood; a testimony to how big her heart is