Be-YOU-ti-ful

Beautiful. That's what you are in the truest sense. You were created and birthed into a world that automatically saw you as such. Your eyes opened to light, your lungs inhaled new air, and the faces behind the blur identified you as a beautiful notion. This sentiment carried on in a very perfect sense until you met life.
Unfortunately it's this same world that toys with you sometimes- negatively judges you, criticizes you- and there are people who only harm themselves (and others too) by intentionally projecting their internal emotions and self-ugly onto you. They pose as sweet and supportive but they aren't. Their goal is to get close to you because it's true, "misery loves company", but misery is really just miserable. Take your malice and self-destructing finger pointing and point it as yourself, darlin'.
DO this: Cut yourself off. Insta-permanent distance and know that your life is unchanged without them in it because this is the easiest thing about loss: severing ties with strangers who appear like dark magic and are flicked away just as quickly. This is called external control--celebrate the strength behind it.

There's good news, though.

You. are. beautiful. and that is unchanging.
The mirrors you turn your eyes away from reflect what you feel. What if mirrors were never created and we only had ourselves and one another to gauge self-beauty?
I admit that I have a very hard time looking at myself in the mirror because I too, don't believe my face exudes anything but ugly and guilt and pain. Sometimes I walk my days wondering if passersby see my insides written all over the drag in my step and the darkness surrounding my already-black eyes. I hide behind my face. Eye contact is tough as is sharing personal space, physical closeness and a heart-felt laugh. If I keep talking then I won't have to stop and think about why I don't want to talk or if I say nothing then I won't be noticed.
I completely understand what ugly and depressed and shame and guilt are either as singular emotions or meshed together into one, great ball of I'm so tired.
Listen, I never knew what internal beauty is until my brother passed away. Beneath all my grief lies a nugget of truth that beams and glitters from time to time. It took several months for me to understand that Charley's thoughts and deep love for me is unchanging- just because he's no longer here with me doesn't mean that our relationship is over. He said to me the night we baptized my daughter Mia, "If no one told you, you looked beautiful today. You are a phenomenal mother". These words resonate with me because he shared compassion and love for me, just for me, on one day that he was barely holding on. He put me first. He put my daughter first. And this crushes me. Still, for months I thought I'm not beautiful anymore and I'm unworthy of love. After sharing this sentiment with my therapist, she too, reassured me that these deeply-seeded words are alive beneath my shattered core. This nugget survives.

As unbearable as life is without my brother, I have learned to be present. My friend said to me just as we caught up last week, "You're alive now. You're awake. You speak differently and you see life differently. It's as though you were sleeping...and now you're not. You communicate with such force from your soul. And it's beautiful". I suppose it's true. I'm significantly more compassionate, fiercely loving, tender with emotions and words and careful that what I say is what I mean.
My brother Charley was very present in all the lives he touched and moved with. He's very present, still.
If it were minutes, hours or years, you had his undivided attention. He listens. He spoke with confidence and wisdom. He shines bright with his eyes and loud with his energy. He smiled almost all the time. I've never known or felt a smile quite like his. He is unique in his aliveness. He is beautiful for always.
And so are you. And so am I.

If You Can't Hear, Then Listen Instead

Charley...

When you escaped from this life and the pain it was thrashing you with, you also took an exceptional amount of my soul and being with you. People say we functioned as twins, walked hand in hand, stemmed from the same life and cloth, and bound together by our inner light. I  happily state to those who ask that, "Yes, I feel him still". I pray this never changes and I pray that you never stray too far from me. 

The morning your breathed your last breath, I woke up and immediately felt different. I firmly remember rising from bed and wondering, I feel so relieved! Since having Mia and becoming a parent, my nights and mornings are often tired. I go to sleep tired and wake up tired. However, this morning was different. I walked to the bathroom, stared at myself in the mirror and just knew. My phone reflected two missed calls from you but no text. My insides shook and went limp. I knew. I stalled and refused to go to your house. I waited because I knew that nothing was going to change and what I was going to see was going to alter my existence and your presence. You were waiting for me. I was scared. I was frightful for you and for me. I was nervous about how to handle the most devastating seconds of my life. But most of all, I broke because I knew you broken to an extent that could never be repaired. 

When you play hide and seek and you're tiptoeing around knowing that someone is going to find you but you're still startled from expectation- that feeling? I do that still, gently pacing the floors in your home waiting for your spirit to visit me. 

This morning I assured Mom that she did well raising you into a wonderful man and kind soul. I encouraged her to know this as not a fact but as a certainty; you lived your life with your own notions but always lived with respect for our family. Sure, you had your jerk tendencies and bluntly honest moments, and who doesn't have flaws and quirks and idiosyncracies? I'm stubborn and hard-headed and bratty and somewhat selfish, but those are my inferior characteristics and not the reasons why I'm loved and love myself. 

For Mom though, not saving you has made her feel inadequate and less-than-motherly. I'm his Mother! How didn't I see this? Why didn't I do anything?  

Just as Robin Williams took his own vastly larger-than-life, he was also severely depressed. He clearly couldn't stand to live anymore and clearly didn't have clarity. I read an article where the writer states, "I'm mostly angry because he wasn't under 24/7 suicide watch. Why didn't anyone help him and why didn't anyone listen?" Truth is, his family may have known and they listened, but I'm almost sure they didn't want to believe he'd take his own life. Not Robin Williams. Not this amazingly gifted and hilariously talented, funny man who provides the world with laughter and happiness. I believe Robin Williams wasn't a performer or an entertainer- I believe that he played himself as himself. He was happy, he was jovial, he was manically present. He wasn't crazy. And he was exhausted. In the darkest moment of his soul, he gave into liberation~ a liberation that freed  him from all pain and desperation.

Charley, I know that you know how deeply loved you are. You know that I love you more than I love myself. Love wasn't the problem I don't think. You and I used to say that love isn't enough. And it isn't. It never has been and it ultimately wasn't for you. This doesn't mean that because I understand you, that your blind-sided decision doesn't hurt me. This fact antagonizes me daily. Love alone couldn't save you. My love for you didn't save you. Life requires so much more from one another and the world we live in. 

One thing that helps to get us all by? Listening. Listening with your heart and not your ears. Hearing with your heart and not the surface. Delving deeper than ice skating on a thin sheet of sheer. Undivided attention. Engaging with someone and eye contact. Genuinely caring for friends and family. 

I listened with you your whole life and I felt every moment we spent together. I listen to you, still. Waiting patiently for the moment your voice speaks me to so clearly that I believe you're home again.

I stand with you for always, 

Yolie 

Faith Involves A Leap Of Imagination

We want to believe without questioning and love without expectation.
Some of us have faith simply by surrendering to what will be and some of  us still, want to have faith but also want to know if there's truth behind it. I'm the latter; I am struggling to have faith that "everything will be okay" and that our higher power in the realms of love, "knows what he's doing". Candidly put- since we don't know what happens when we die, since we don't know FOR CERTAIN, I instead allow myself to have hope that life is going to be just that: life. A daily existence with technically no end in sight and a short 24-hours of what we make of it. Though this perception sounds cynical, it comforts me because it means I have zero expectation and investment in tomorrow. For I now know that tomorrow-that overnight, heck, a moment, a curveball of words-changes entire lives. Whether the catapult begins when the sun falls and the moon shines, life also morphs into another rise and people fall...forever.

Many years ago my brother Charley and I once discussed the idea of faith and dissected it as though it were a psychology project. Is it religion that drives and encourages a people to drop their arms, cease the fight and worry, and extend their souls onto a master of all? Do we, as a culture, find life more manageable if we believe, "Let Go, Let God"? What I mean here is, do we unburden ourselves, liberate ourselves even, by handing over our deepest, saddest, uncertain thoughts and giving the holy universe permission to do as it pleases, as it wishes and as it knows best.~ "Here. I trust You". Maybe it's because I'm a control freak (lovingly, of course) that I want to know how and why and when.

When does faith become hope and hope become denial? At what point in the spectrum is it no longer faith? What if we're so blinded by hope that we can't see reality?
These are the philosophical sentiments my brother and I exchanged almost word for word. He and I sat together and pondered faith because we didn't grow up in a religious household and were guided and encouraged to believe in God and ourselves and each other. And I suppose I grew up with pessimistic notions because our childhood was rough, our adolescent years were challenging and our adults years have been nothing short of "ahh, so that's why I'm who I am". Life, right?
I've had writers block for almost a month; afraid of my thoughts and the darkness it feels, pain is much too heavy to formulate into words you may understand. What I did to get here was look back on the major events of my life to see the broader picture. Almost like taking a break from a performance to sit with the camera man and asking him to rewind and play in slow motion.
This is what I saw: Charley was always there. My Father's death, my Mother's grief, the lonely childhood, questions and vague answers or none at all, the silence in the house, the drawn blinds, skinny kids, brother acting as Dad, brother acting as man of the house, Mom remarrying...and so on and so forth. When I look at every moment that has shaped me to now, Charley was front and center, or front and on my side. And now he's not and never will again.
If you've ever lost someone, and I emphasize LOST because you will only see them in your mind's eye, then you know pain and you know loss. What I have faith in is that life ends. What I have faith in is that I am my best in the moments when I am living. After that moment, anything goes.
And what I believe is that we do not betray our faith by questioning it and seeking meaning, rather we strengthen it.