I was trying to be someone different today. Someone interesting, someone new? Honestly, I'm not entirely sure which.
Breathing deep, I filled my lungs with the cold dry air. Climbing trees was such a dear passion of my childhood, that I turned it into my career. Now that I was near the top of the pines of the Tongass, my angst started to slow. Piercing air straightened the thoughts in my head.
I miss you. Your face, your warmth, your kindness…all the things that you have brought to my life for fourteen years was ripped away in mere moments. Now, there is a hole. And that hole is filling my life.
When I was cooking breakfast this morning, my heart fell out of my chest, and my mind went completely blank. Without you, I don't know who I have the capacity to be anymore. So much of my identity was wrapped into you. You were the perfect incarnation of salvation and freedom in my life. Selflessly loving with your whole being just came naturally to you.
I could say that Camille is my name, and that I am one of the only female lumberjacks in the nation. I could tell you that my father was a Georgian preacher, and that my mother was the strongest woman I know. Her Irish accent came out thick, and strong while loving us, yelling at us, or simply teaching us to dry our own tears. There is not much I like to say about my older sister. Samara was the true epitome of every characteristic that I hate in the world. Her being gone makes it so strange to speak of her. However, my younger brother, Hunter, was so sweet, and innocently gentle that I had to shield him from her by maintaining a friendship with the her. But, you knew this. You knew my whole family. You kept us together. Our lynchpin was you. Your pain made us forget our own. Your joy brought light to our lives. How am I ever going to truly let you go? In some way, I found myself in you. You were my constant. Now I just float along in the breeze like an empty grocery bag. A meaningless, hollow vessel.
Up in these trees, though, the pain doesn't feel quite so bad. The crisp air sweeps out the cobwebs, to indulge an annoying cliché. My hair lifts with the wind, blowing sharply around my face; it lifts my spirits as well. Growing up I'd always hated those sad, sappy bleeding heart stories that immature, inexperienced teens and naïve adults love to post. They reminded me of my own internal emotional struggle that was always plaguing the darkest corners of my mind. But, now, as I glaze over them, I see them with eyes as fresh as flowers in a frost-tipped spring. Each new story that pops up in the internet, and in magazines are full of youthful angst rimmed in passion. And sure, to feel the pain that life constantly offers may not be "the thing anymore," but love and angst travel through life with one hand shackled to the other. After all, Greek mythology denotes love and passion as brothers, does it not? Modern day literature defines passion as only lustful. However, humans all over the world are flooded with passion about music, the arts, the beauty that Mother Nature offers, food, travel, and life itself. Passion is that which stirs the soul. It tugs at your heart strings. Passion does not equate to sex. I wish that people understood that on a better level.
I miss your protective presence at my side. The stutter that made it so difficult for me to communicate with other people drew me to you, our spirits intertwining. This ridiculous impediment (some call it a mental disability), constantly gives me every reason to not talk to anyone. Stuttering is the reason I moved here. It is the reason I fled to the forests of Alaska. No one understood me in my childhood. They believed me stupid and slow. Yet, you loved without reserve or exception. Besides, medical studies have revealed my stutter is proof of my enhanced intelligence rather than stupidity.
How am I to deal with your loss? I miss you so much, my heart hurts. You always believed me perfect and without flaw. At this point, I just want to go home and sob into a rather large glass of vodka. As deep as my sorrow runs, sometimes I need to deal with it in a shallow way. My home is empty. How else should I deal with it?
Living here in Alaska, you were the one comforting solace in such a pleasantly lonely place. I depended on your constant warmth at my side. Now, living here without you, my worst fears and thoughts come to life. I hated the idea of hunting without you to come home to. You were my one piece of the lovely home that was ripped from me in that horrible blaze of fire. You saved my life that night. You didn't have time to save my parents, or my siblings. Just little nineteen year old me, who got to watch everything she held dear turn to dust and ashes. You were even there for the heavy drinking that followed in the years after. Faithfully, patiently sitting in the barstool next to me and Johnny, you would lap quietly at club soda, and snarl at any foolish man who dared approach me in my pain. When a sob found a way out of my clenched teeth, you always nuzzled whatever part of me you could reach, just to remind me that I was never alone. Through all my craziness, you remained closely at my side, faithful as any loving man, ever my loyal companion.
I am trying to be someone different today. To see the world from their eyes, without you in it. You, who saved my life, helped me heal my mind, and would lend me your strength when my own would fail. I wanted to rid myself of the pain, so I woke up this morning, told myself that I was foolish for mourning you so deeply. Despite myself, I came to work. Work was more strenuous today than I imagined it would be. It would have been a good way to distract myself, if it weren't for the people at work I had actually allowed to know me. It's an odd thing for me to have friends. Sympathetic pats on the back, as I make my way through the lumber yard came from my friends, and scornful mocking looks from those who were less than fond of having a woman on the team. Their thoughts of women obviously paid no homage to the minds, ideas, and emotions that we bear. Yet, over the past few years I earned their begrudging respect. Looking down on them all, I remembered the day that you also drew respect from them; the day that they came to love you as I did. Still seeing you charging in from the trees, a tear escaped my eye. By landing head first into the gut of the team leader, you landed him on his backside in a thick, and rather rocky mud puddle. The falling tree branch only broke two of his steel covered toes. Not only did you save him from severe injuries, and perhaps death, you also managed to cover him in moose feces. A fact which, to this day, the team won't let him live down. Your love for human life far exceeded my own. Though many told me that I was crazy, your personality always seemed so much richer in color than so many people.
So, tonight, as I sat at the bar, stool next to me empty, shooting down Jameson's, and chasing it with your favorite club soda, I allowed myself to feel the full force of the sorrow. You were gone, and nothing could ever replace you. You were no longer my constant companion, and I needed to learn to cope. I would never see your bright, warm brown eyes again. I would never wake to your warm pressure nearly pushing me off the bed. I would never get to smell your paws again. You would never again sit at my feet when I was sick, whining so I would scratch you.
And when that arrogant, moronic, bastard of a man came up to me, half drunk and glassy-eyed, I braced myself for the worst, knowing I was looking for a fight. You weren't here to keep me calm anymore, so I was going to have to do this on my own. Realizing, in that moment that I wasn't only sad, I was angry that your lovely life was taken from me, I let the adrenaline course through my veins. And, when he said to me, "God stop being so emotional, it was just a dog!" I beat him until my knuckles were raw.
--Fin--