veintiséis

dear chelsea,

yo yo. you are now 26 calendar years old, as is the traditional way of marking time in your culture. you are still married, still a mom of two. still battle (crippling!) feelings of self-doubt. still think jeff is the funniest guy around. maybe even more now actually, as you spend more and more of your free time together. you still like to read, and run, and write occasionally. you still do not enjoy having your picture taken, and would like to have more photos of memories, but still hate taking them. you still have the same girlfriends, even though you live in (3!) separate states now. you still hate the commercials for scary movies, because there is just no warning. dark and evil is not your thing. at all. even if it is all fake. ick. you still get eczema, gross. you still prefer to wear pjs anytime you are in your house, even if it slides you right in to the cliche of "letting yourself go." you still want (desperately!) to move back to arizona. your hair is thinner then it was. just slightly. you have more bags under your eyes. you are starting to see a woman's face in the mirror, and something about that satisfies you. you are starting to wrap your mind around writing a book, even as just a writing exercise. you love your girls more than you ever thought was possible. they make you laugh. you are (slightly!) more okay with just being who you are and can (almost!) let go of what other people think. a little bit. slowly. you are more and more forgetting what your own "taste" is, and yet somehow you know yourself better than ever. you learned a lot this year. mostly about one thing. one thing with endless aspects to think about. 

you lost ashley. 

(!!!) 

this is all you can really think about, in your quiet moments. it is a wound. a wound that is bandaged, but still affecting everyday life. always. sometimes you bump it unexpectedly, and the depth of the pain takes your breath away for a moment. sometimes you have to unwrap the bandage, flush out the wound. it hurts and you cry, but it's necessary to remove the debris. you redress the wound. you work around it, get on with your life, but it is always there. you don't always talk about it, or acknowledge it. sometimes you can even (momentarily!) forget about it. but it is there, and always will be. 

you learned about loss. about hope. about charity. about faith. you questioned your faith, like a bridge you have spent years building, then had to finally take the first step to cross. would it hold? you thought about people, and how you never really know what others are carrying around with them, all the time. the unseen wounds the keep bandaged and out of sight. you have taken long looks at the idea of "the rest of my life" and let your mind mess around with the idea of quantifying it. you have had sacred moments. sacred and precious beyond earthly measure. 

last year you wrote ..."it feels like a monster in the dark, looming. only a matter of time before the wave crashes over you, washing you in your trials." -- what did you know? what did you know? 

and so yes, another year has gone by. and this one has changed how you proceed from here on out, permanently.   but I guess now you realize, some things are important, and some things are not. rearrange accordingly. 

enjoy your cake, enjoy your daughters, enjoy your husband, enjoy your family, enjoy your shaved legs in clean pjs. 

yours, of course. 

chelsea

ps. you should have taken your self-imposed traditional self-portrait earlier. next year, next year.