Those Sucker Punch Days [BRH].

Today is number four. 

Sometimes people ask me if I have a routine on this day, as if death is monotonous, or something to be ritualized. Maybe for some, it's comforting, but I'm unable to plan how I will feel - whether today will be a sucker punch to the gut or a quiet, tempering echo of loneliness. The punches come when I don't expect them and are never limited to this day, but rather make themselves known when nothing seems to make sense in the world. So, no -

I can't plan for this day any more than I can plan for those Sucker Punch Days.

Today I'm sitting in the park on a towel with a book in my lap and a journal at my side. I've managed to find a spot in the Concrete Jungle of the West with some patches of greenery, a few handfuls of trees, and pealing laughter of children with grubby, calloused fingers tripping across monkey bars.

A few ants have found their way between the pages of my book and onto the slide of my skin. I admittedly don't love ants (or bugs of any kind), but they make me laugh now because you feared ants more than a lot of other things in the world, which was never something that I could quite wrap my head around. Just one of your eccentricities that I loved about you.

One of the worst parts about your death is the rampant fear that seems to permeate the air whenever I mention your name, the unwillingness to talk about you. Everyone remembers things differently, processes them in their own way, forms their own attachments and connections. There's so much about our time together that I remember, but so much that's missing because we were always creating new memories.

And then you were gone and I needed them much more. I'm desperate to remember the little things, to fill in the gaps where my young brain and full heart fail me.

But that's the thing about death - people are afraid of reliving the pain again, so it's easier not to talk about you. But that fosters forgetfulness and before I know it, I'm struggling to conjure your laugh as readily as before. I can't remember how many freckles painted your nose or how many cinnamon pop tarts you supplied me with during our late nights. I've lost count of the number of bad pop songs we belted out in the haven of your room or choreographed in your basement. 

I wish you were here to fill in the blanks with me. I want one more video, one more song and dance, one more side-splitting laugh. 

I want someone to hide the betrayal in their eyes when I dare to speak your name because don't I know how much it hurts?

Don't I know how "uncomfortable" it is to talk about someone who ended their own life?

But that is not your identifier, Brittany Rebecca. You are not what you did. Just as I am not the scars on my arm, you are not the noose around your neck.

And eventually, the rest of the world will figure that out while I am still trying to fill in the blanks, tiring of living in an evolving world that will never know you.