It’s April 20th.  Again.  It comes every year, although it never feels the same.  Most people in the world don’t notice the date on the calendar as anything significant, just another day.  I’m getting there too.  I want to be there.

My social media accounts are full of rememberance and pictures of flowers, pictures of kids, links to songs, links to articles, messages to one another and to a community in general.  I have decided to abstain.

I thought, ‘you know, I could sit down and write about how different life is now at 34 than it was back then when I had just turned 18.  I could talk about the path and the lessons and the tears and the work.’  But I don’t want to.  I have put in so much work to find my way out of the vaccum of memories and fear and I really don’t want to voluntarily fall back in a rehash everything again.

So I won’t.

I will scroll past the flowers and the sad songs and the old pictures of old friends and the “NEVER FORGETs”.  Not because I’m heartless, but because after 16 years I don’t really want to remember anymore.  For years I relived the day constantly because I felt I owed it to the people who died, that I never let the memory – or their faces – fade.  But its been 16 years of actively moving on with my life and the memories are in there.  They’re not going anywhere.  Whether I like it or not.

So I will wait for April 21st.  And it will come, like it does every year.  And life will go on.