It Would Be Your 30th.

Babes, O how I have been dreading this day. I have been aware of it looming for a while, and now it’s here. Technically it is in a few hours but I plan on spending most of it intoxicated so I thought I would write you now.  I always liked to be the first to wish you happy birthday, plus I can’t seem to do anything else.

I just walk around the house, lost. You would be turning 30. Remember when 30 was so old, like old? But here we are, only now it seems to young. Impossibly young to be here without you. I know young people die. I know that many don’t even make 29, but I don’t know them. And yet, I imagine all the people they leave behind are left bewildered and pissed right off as well.

I will spend the day doing something you would love.  With the kids at the water slides, they will be adorable and distracting. Then I will go out, only with the girls instead of you and your friends, where I will drink. How about this, I will drink what you would have… haha you are laughing at that aren’t you? Remembering the one and only time I went drink for drink with you and Colin in Aruba… hmmm well, OK. I won’t drink like you would have, but I will drink like you used to like. You had a great appreciation for ‘drunk Chelsea’ as you affectionately refer to it, always hoping she'd come out.

After your accident I drank a little, not even much, but at the two week mark I said no more. Since than I have rarely drank, like I need more problems. Only it is your birthday. Your birthday. It was always a fun time of year. Having a February birthday I lived vicariously through yours. Some moments have hurt my heart more than others, and while you are no more gone today than any other day, it stings more.

Tomorrow I will try to see past your death and celebrate your life.

I cling to the knowing that it was a blessing to have loved you and to have had you love me. Out of all the girls, you picked me... It took me a little longer to get it, but that extra sweet hug in the school hallway, and you had my heart. From then on we played the game.

I am one fortunate girl to have known you, to have really known you. To have fought with you, to have broken your heart and had you break mine.  To have had you as my first great love, possibly my only, and to have had you both challenge and support me, possibly in equal parts. I am grateful to have shared a home and a bed with you, to have had a fur baby with you, and to have grown up side-by-side. To have been the one to throw you surprise parties, pick you up when you had had too many drinks... Sometimes not pick you up, and watch you age.

To have been there as you grew into the man you were. To have been the first to see your grey hairs and of course point them out, and to witness you starting to get hangovers… Only in the last few years.

30…

You didn't get all the time I wish you had here, but you lived the time you had to the max. You lived life to the fullest, and  though I feel ripped off,  I pray that you feel complete.

Cheers babes.

With all of my love, happy birthday.