goodbye summer

These are the last few days of our beautiful ann arbor summer. I wonder how we let the weeks and days and hours fly by us. I could go on and on but I'll keep it short: this summer saved my life.

I started back at whole foods in ann arbor. This company is literally the best ever to work for and it feels good to be back. Everyone in this store is so awesome. Also almost everyone seems to be married or at least engaged, it's wild and I envy it, it's so adorable and lucky.

Santa Barbara in four days. If Amanda and I don't come home, don't be surprised. Everything seems better there. Literally everything. I can't wait to see travis and that ocean and feel perfection for 12 days.

dear dad.

After you passed, I got a lot of different perspectives on how to deal. Most of it only hurt me instead of helping me, but that's life.I get it. Nobody knows what to say to a 20 year old girl who lost a father she spent her whole life trying to understand. For a while I really don't think my brain or my heart let me believe you actually left me. My heart told me, "he couldn't leave you right now. Nope. Not as you're just becoming close for the first time since you were a child. he would never leave you like this." And my brain tricked me into thinking he was still just 60 miles and a phone call away. I guess that trick is still being played because most mornings I wake up expecting a missed call from you only now I want to call you and tell you I love you instead of putting it off for days like I did when you were still here. Despite all the bad advice I got, a few people really pulled me up with these: "It comes in waves" and "some days are harder than others." It still hurts like hell and it's harder than anything else. But those are the waves and these feelings are only this intense some days.

As long as my memory serves me, I'll never forget what happened that night when I came home from the hospital, after I had just watched you take your last breath and your chest heaved up and down until your life was gone.I don't believe in god or signs or some fairy tale afterlife. But man, did the idea of you shake me up that night dad.

I was upstairs in my bedroom in royal oak with tymm, trying to figure out how to fall asleep. It was after 5 am and I was in bed with my glasses off, exhausted in complete darkness. Out of nowhere that orange light began to glow. He jumped up to see where it was coming from. "Do you see that jess?" I could see it even with my broken eyeballs. It was coming from some power cord on the floor and without my glasses on it lit up my entire world for a few seconds as tymm held the cord up in front of me, holding one end of it in each hand to show me it was not plugged into anything and it was still glowing. How the power light on that cord was glowing in his hands that night after you died I guess I'll never know. But there are two things I do know. You were an electrician and you didn't say goodbye to me. You were good at most things you did, but you were great at two things. Making lights turn on and making sure you always told me you loved me before you said goodbye. And for the rest of my life I'll believe that's exactly what you did that night in my bedroom in royal oak. Two days later I got a tattoo of a latern to keep me sane.It's worked. All I have left are memories and for the rest of my life I will search for moments full of you. I loved you endlessly, my handsome dad. If heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied and illuminate the "no" on their vacancy signs--if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks, I'll follow you into the dark.

I can't wait to look at bees, climb on trees, carve our names in three inches deep, dance naked to jazz, eat pounds of cake and sing at the tops of our lungs.

You and those wolf tee shirts.

I never sleep anymore. Last night was nice. Birthdays everywhere. Sheena from Lemuria sang Sarah happy birthday, that was wild. I work in 45 minutes. I don't know how people can sit in bars all the time. I feel like a hoss with shit stuck in my lungs from all the smoke I sat around last night. I don't know how people even need to get drunk when drinks like Mountain Dew World of Warcraft exist. I woke up feeling like I had a hangover just from consuming that. I turn into a freak of nature from that beverage. Ask Johnny.

Ice cream sales time.