Positively Scarred

I can’t handle today. I feel a serene calmness in the air, but also panicky. Like something should happen. Then I think on it a moment and I remember something has happened.

Sometimes I feel as though I’ve been dreaming this whole time and that I’ll wake up soon and find this was all a dirty trick played by my subconscious. But I never wake up. It’s real and it happened. All of it. I replay the conversation over in my head. I replay all the conversations after that. How stoic everyone was… How solemn and calm. I wish we could go back to before that moment and maybe try to change things. Who knows if it would make a difference… Maybe not. Maybe this was meant to happen.

I know I’m being vague. I’m trying hard not to write the words. They’re just hanging on the ends of my fingertips as I type this and I don’t want to say it because that makes it that much more real. I go days without thinking about it, without wondering, without remembering. But then I come across something that sparks a memory. I don’t cry. I haven’t cried in this whole year about it.

But it hangs there in my memory and upon my heart. All the good times, all the laughs and the jokes, all the memories… They’re there, whether I’m consciously thinking of them or not.

Today is a day of remembrance, of mourning a life lost.

I wish you could have still been here. I wish you knew how much you’ve affected us all. You are at peace now. You are gone but not forgotten.

RIP Shaun Carranza
August 1, 1983 - December 8, 2010