Moon River Frozen Over

The anniversary effect.

A psychological phenomena wherein a person remembers a trauma or other upsetting event more powerfully on the same day each year on which it originally happened-- no.

That's not accurate. It's not about remembering, per se. Sometimes, you don't remember at all. Sometimes, it's not about your mind actively thinking of a thing. It's about your body knowing it. It's about the imprint that the events of our lives leave on our whole selves, our bodies and our minds and our spirits, all as one. It's about the physical reality of the seasons and the instinctual connection we have to the rhythms of the world.

Something happened. It happened in a particular time and space. And that time was marked by the length of the day and the temperature in the air and the smells of the plants. That time was marked by the spot in space where the earth spun at that moment. There was a physical reality enveloping that event, and your body was aware of it on some level that your conscious mind never was. But it will get close to the same every year, once a year. And your body will be aware of that, again.

And that moment will come back to you--whether you know it or not, whether or not you're thinking about it-- that moment will come back, and affect you again and again.

I suppose that it only requires that metaphysical an explanation if you don't actually remember it, though. If you do, it's all so pedestrian in nature: you just feel sad because of the memory. It's interesting to think of, I guess, that these two separate responses aren't actually separate at all-- they are just the before and after of our brain's egocentric distortion. The universe creates this magic connection between the energy of the world and the energy of our bodies, and the moment we realize it's happening, our conscious mind reduces it to something wholly self-involved and unremarkable: We aren't feeling the rhythms of the universe with the incalculably sensitive instrument that is our body. We are just remembering our own petty, tragic lives.

But enough with the commentary about the nature of life and existence itself. This was supposed to be about me.

It's Christmas Eve. On a broad, cultural level, it's the anniversary the night that Joseph and Mary went from inn to inn looking for a room to house Mary as she gave birth to the savior king. As a society, however, we're so removed from that story that it doesn't even matter that it never actually happened in December, even if you do believe it happened at all. Broadly and culturally, that's merely the origin story of oft-commercialized superhero in a big red suit. Nevertheless, whether it's the manger scene that pulls at your heart strings, or the vision of Santa Claus, or that one scene in the Peanuts Christmas special where Linus recites a bible verse in humble explanation of what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown-- nevertheless, it is a time of year that unites us all, somehow, in a shared reverence for something, something.

I think many of us, if not most, grow up to share the experience of the loss of the joy of Christmas. When you are a child, it's special and magic. Then, little by little, as the myths become exposed and the garish, physical realities become more undeniable, it fades away. By the time you're in your twenties and shopping for presents with a handful of too-hard-earned cash, it's usually gone, replaced by a melancholy at the hollowness and some impotent desire to find it again.  The mythos goes, however, that it is revived anew when we grow to have our own children, and are able to experience it once more through their eyes.

Four years and five days ago, I had a child of my own. And he's in the other room now, with his father, and his new brother. And I desperately want to be with them, to be feeling what I am meant to feel this time of year-- what I was promised I would feel. But I am not.

I am not, because there is another anniversary. An anniversary that, against all of my will, seems to supersede that of Mary and Joseph and the inn, supersedes those of Santa's countless flights. Supersedes the memory of all those idyllic childhood Christmases, the nativity scene set up in my grandmother's stone fireplace and last-minute tree decorating my father insisted upon.


I remember the day the envelope came in the mail, sometime in October. I remember me, seven months pregnant or so, sitting on the couch, seeing that it was from the court, opening it. I remember the gasp and shouting "No!" with sheer horror. I remember my family asking what was wrong.

"The divorce," I said, tearfully. "They set the divorce hearing for Christmas Eve."


I can count so easily the exact amount of time it's been since I divorced my best friend. I know how old my son is-- he turned four last week-- and I know that it's Christmas Eve. Mine and Zack's marriage was officially dissolved four years ago today.

I want not to put undo emphasis on that day. As must be true of every divorce, our marriage had fallen apart well before that. Long enough that, if you don't know, the son born five days earlier was not his, nor were we in any way still functionally together when I first became pregnant. We had separated, if I am remembering my timeline accurately, nearly two full years before, and made the final decision to end the marriage fully eighteen months prior. So it should have been that I was thoroughly ready by the time December 24th, 2013 came around.

The reality is that very little of that final eighteen months was blessed with the clarity of the moment where we first made the excruciating decision to take off our rings. The reality is that almost none of my life has ever been blessed with such sureness, and for good reason, I suppose: the harder something is to do, the more certain you must be to make yourself do it. And I don't know that anything has ever been harder for me than making the decision to end my marriage to Zack.

There's much I could say here about the reasons we broke up, and how they never once undermined our love for each other. There's much I could say here about two people just not being able to make it work, two people who only want to stop hurting each other before the damage becomes too great. There's so much to be said about everything we were, and so much to be grateful for, in spite of it all, for everything we still are.

But I've said that all before, and I'll say it all again when the moment demands it. That moment is not right now.

Right now is the time that I need to write through this grief at it's most basic level, so that I can get back to my children on Christmas Eve. Right now is the time that I need to let my fingers on the keyboard release the pain and regret that my children are not his children. Right now is the time I need to let go of the guilt of even thinking that, and let myself think it, so it can be thought, so it can be written, so it can be out. Right now, I need to listen to my own breaking voice as I read this out loud as I type it while tears stream down my face; I need to hear myself declare the truth: that I miss him so, so much.

Right now, I need to let the seasons and the length of the day and the smell in the air bring me back to that courthouse, to our final, tearful kiss just before we signed the paper that somehow ended the last ten years of our lives. Right now, I need to balance how enormous that was-- the official end of our marriage-- with how insignificant it was: we are not a paper to be signed and notarized and made official. We are not a marriage that can be disolved. We are honesty, and intimacy, and love. And we love each other, still.

The full truth is that there was more than that happening for me on that day-- the sun was shining a particular way and there were other sounds and other people, and I was suffering deeply from the pain of a traumatic birth experience just five days prior.  The full truth is that there is more than just the ghost of my marriage haunting me this time of year. The full truth is that there's context upon top of context, and not everything that makes me sad on Christmas Eve has to do with Zack.

Yet, somehow, that's both more and less true. Sometimes, you have to be true to a moment in time, and let yourself feel what feel's relevant, and ignore the context and the history and the smell of the plants in the air. Sometimes you must trust yourself to forget all that, knowing your body will remember it for you.

Right now, the only memories that feel relevant are those of him, and I, and Christmas-- Christmas Eve. The Christmas Eve where we were given the gift of just enough certainty, in a moment, to sign the papers that we needed to sign.


Every year, it leaves me feeling hollow. Ever year, it supersedes all else, despite all I do to fight that. So today, an hour or so ago, I decided not to fight it anymore. The pain is so great, so omnipresent. All that's really left to do is lean into it.

An hour or so again, I put on headphones and made the choice to listen to Joni Mitchell's River. It's coming on Christmas, they're cutting down trees. I'm putting on headphones and listening to songs to help me find peace.

I made my baby cry.

I'm listening now, but now it's time to switch. To another river, a Moon River. We danced on our wedding day, and it was our song, and it was always our song. It's really the most melancholy and beautiful song ever written, and so were we. Melancholy and beautiful.

We're after the same rainbow's end.

I lean my head back and close my eyes. I let it wash over me. I breath deeply, and I exhale. I let it out.

Zack is my origin story. Zack is the thing that pulls at my heartstrings. And Zack will come back to me, whether or not I know it, and effect me again and again. He is part of my connection to the universe, and he is part of the story of my petty, tragic life.

But today is not December 24th, 2013. Today is December 24th, 2017. And those words from the song-- I made my baby cry-- have more literal echoes coming from the next room, so it's time to get up and go to him, the newest and littlest him of my life.

I've done my remembering for today. Let's see if I can manage to make another memory, a happier one to look back on another year. Not a better one, but happier.

On with it.

I Am a Great Writer, But...

This year has been an eventful one, a notable one, an extraordinary one. I have been a part of the creation of things, two things, that will last and matter and change the rest of my life. One, an independent film that I helped to write, and shaped in numerous ways beyond that. The other, a child, an infant who I hold now, feeding with one arm as I write this with another.

It feels important to point that out; the simultaneous feeding and writing. Because as much as anything else, it is the balance that is impressive: being part of this movie while dealing with a particularly harsh pregnancy, all while maintaining a job and my maternal duties to my first son, and my marriage and all the day-to-day drudgery that one must slog through undeterred while trying to achieve greatness with what’s left of their energy. Juggling, overcoming and prioritizing; that feels like a very female thing. Feeling guilty about those priorities at the end of the day feels even more like one.

On Friday, the film opened at a black tie gala in a beautiful venue. Despite an untenable level of stress and confusion leading up to it, the evening went off almost without a hitch. It’s worth noting that the film itself was only finished (to the extent it is now, it still requires some editing before the film festival circuit) perilously soon before its first-ever screening. It’s worth noting that while the director was losing sleep getting it finished in time, I was losing sleep helping with details of the night— programs and drink vouchers and gift bags and more— as well as giving him much needed emotional support on a daily, sometimes hourly, basis.

Indeed, the night was a celebration not only of the accomplishments of the cast and crew and all of us in creating the film, but also of a smaller, tighter knit group within the group working to make the night itself a success. I was a part of it at every level. It was my night, mine and those beautiful few who have come to mean so much to me.

And it’s fitting, I think, that I should start this post about that night, about those accomplishments and the value of them and how truly and deeply I was a part of them. Because, sadly, that’s not what this post is about.

This post is about being fat.

This is a post about being fat, and having that somehow matter more than everything else, and having that derail one’s feelings of accomplishment and pride with embarrassment and shame.

There are pictures of that night, many pictures. In them, I am wearing the dress that I hunted for for months, anticipating that this would be easily among the biggest nights of my life. In them, you can see the makeup that I arranged to have done by the brilliant makeup artist who worked on the movie, and got to the venue three hours ahead of time to have done, though I never wear makeup. In them, you can see all the effort I put forth to look beautiful, because it felt so important to be.

These are pictures of me, in a beautiful dress, in a beautiful place. These are pictures of me celebrating one of the greatest accomplishments of my life, standing next to the people I shared it with so intimately, being celebrated by hundreds of people around us. These are pictures I should cherish forever.

And I can’t stand to look at them.

There's a lot here to be said about all of this, a lot to unpack and process. It feels important to mention the double standards in this issue: while I understand that there are a great many men out there who struggle with body image, I can't help but fundamentally believe that it this is simply and demonstrably worse for women: that men can be great and powerful and do important work without anyone ever commenting on their appearance. (And, not irrelevantly, on their priorities. It's happened many times that while I was off working on this film, people wanted to know who was taking care of my children. I doubt that would have happened to my husband.)

Still, that's not at the core of it for me, right now. At the core if it, right now, is this sense everything I did leading up to that night was invalidated, for me, by the fact that I didn't look good. I've felt this way dozens of times: planning my first trip to Europe, a lifelong dream of mine, and being terrified to the point of distraction that I would look heavy in the pictures. Worrying about the way my arms would look in my dress for my wedding, rather than being able to simply relish the reality that I was marrying someone who found me beautiful inside and out.

Then there's the fact that, in none of these circumstances, did I actually look bad. I looked overweight. It's not that I never have insecurities about my hair or my face or my skin-- I do. But they pale in comparison. I can look back at photos from all of these things and appreciate that I have a pretty smile and sparkling eyes, and usually fair skin. There are people in my life who are dear to me who do not have that, who have very significant insecurities over things that I try not to take for granted-- I think I have a pretty face most of the time, and I try to be grateful for thats. But, there again, when I see a roll of fat captured on film, I lose my ability to keep perspective.

Those things are all part of looking good- the hair, the skin, and the figure. So why is it that one trumps the others so entirely for me?

I think-- I know-- that the society we live in still shames people for their weight in a way that we don't find it acceptable to shame them for other things. There is this clear sense of fault that we don't associate with someone being short or having poor skin or just being too plain. There has been, of late, some very real progress made in this arena: people fighting for body acceptance for all, and, more importantly, for themselves. It's a movement, and it's gaining speed. There are now pop singers and swimsuit models who are heavier-- maybe not heavy enough, in general, to make the whole world feel included, but for someone like me, who is, I suppose, on the thin side of fat, it makes beauty feel attainable. No matter what I do, I will never be a size two. But with some effort and toning, I could stand alongside the likes of Meghan Trainor and Ashley Graham and not feel out of place.

Yet, for all the progress made in people embracing themselves, their is an ever more bitter backlash. Every fat person knows of someone judgmental who claims to be looking out for their health. We have all read hateful comments from people who believe that self-acceptance is a slippery slope to a society full of slovenly behemoths in wheelchairs who eschew any desire for health in exchange for the comparative “ease” of self-acceptance. We've all met people who believe that weight is the very simple exchange of burning more calories than one takes in, and there's nothing more complicated than that-- not genetics. not metabolisms, not a full host of genuine barriers to healthy eating and exercise.

There are points I've fought to make-- largely on the behalf of others-- that there's compelling scientific evidence coming out now that shows that losing weight, and maintaining weight loss, is much more challenging than we've ever understood as a society. There is evidence showing that being overweight is not as fundamentally unhealthy as the world would have you believe, and that in many of the markers with which we measure health, overweight people often score higher than thin people. But again, none of these feel like the emotional point that I'm trying to find my way to making. somehow.

I suppose the point has something to do with how this movement is important, because, whatever I chose to do with my body, it shouldn't invalidate the way I feel about totally unrelated accomplishments. I co-wrote a movie. I made it great, because I am a great writer. I shouldn't have to qualify that. I should never have to write the sentence, "I am a great writer, but I am fat."

I have not always been fat, though I have nearly always been afraid of it. Most of my life, I've been inching slowly towards it, and, due to the genetics of my family, I've been terrified in feeling that it's unavoidable. But I've hovered in that area where I was neither truly fat nor thin for most of my adult life. It wasn't until this latest pregnancy that things took a turn for the unambiguous. Before the pregnancy, I was on ADHD medication that, while helping dramatically with my focus and energy, had the added bonus of controlling my appetite and boosting my metabolism. When I became pregnant and stopped taking the pills, I gained 15 pounds or so almost immediately, well before I normally would have with the growth of the baby. I wasn't able to go back to the medication while pumping breast milk, which I have only recently stopped doing. It's likely that when I get back on this medication, I will lose some weight very quickly. But, since I've also put my body through the rigors of giving birth yet again since then, I suspect it will not be enough to revert to a place of being occasionally mistaken for a thin person.

The biggest emotional toll in all of this, for me, is that my self-perception has not adjusted to my outward reality, and I don't think it easily can. When I look in the mirror, I'm able to hold myself in such a way that it hides my biggest insecurities. This is not to say that I feel good looking at myself;  I often do not. But nothing can match the gut-wrenching punch of seeing a picture that was a taken from a bad angle, which I suspect many of my angles are. And I have to remind myself, though I wish I didn't, that other people see me from those angles every day. That I have no idea what they're seeing.

This is the thing I'm struggling with the most: I do not know what I look like to other people.

I'm realizing now that so much of my shame comes from the fact that I continue to act like a thin person, oblivious. The dress I wore was slinky and contoured to my body, which in turn, contoured in ways I quite simply couldn't detect in a mirror. I had every intention of wearing some very powerful shapewear with it, for what's it's worth, but in the hectic struggle of the day, I forgot it at home before getting dressed at the venue. If I'd known what I looked like, I would have made a point to go get it.

There's a picture of me standing next to the makeup artist, a girl who has become a close friend. She's heavier than I am. She chose a different style of dress, a gown, and she did so, I presume, because she's used to being heavy. I look at pictures of her and I can only think that she looks amazing. This leads me to the startling conclusion that, at least in part, what I am ashamed of here is not that I am fat, but that I haven't learned to conceal it, to communicate to others that I know that I should. I realize, as I am writing this, that it's not simply that I look fat that bothers me, it's that other people must perceive that I don't realize it-- like the long-term equivalent of having spinach in my teeth-- or that I have instead, chosen to accept it. I have to ask myself, with horror, whether that's the real problem: that I ashamed that I forgot to be adequately ashamed.

I believe I should be ashamed of my body, as it is now. I am humiliated when I forget what I look like, and then exhibit confidence that I shouldn't have.  I shouldn't have worn a dress that said "look at me." I should have worn a dress that said, "I am a great writer, but I am fat." Which is kind of a lot to ask from a dress.

The writer Lindy West, who is well-known in the body acceptance movement, wrote a piece once about coming out as being fat, the way others come out as being gay. Her point was that, for all her life, people acted like it was something too delicate to acknowledge, or a temporary state she was sure to overcome. She wanted to make the point that she'd been fat her whole life, and it wasn't going to change, and maybe it wasn't useful to pretend that it wasn't there. Maybe acknowledging it, and asking her friends and family to acknowledge it, could help with the perception held by herself and others that, despite being wholly obvious, it's something she should try to hide.

Part of body acceptance is, well, literally accepting your body. I'm not ready to do that. I'm not ready to call myself beautiful and decide to not be ashamed. I do want to lose weight. I will call my doctor and get my prescription for ADHD meds going again. I will go hungry. I will push myself to exercise too hard, and in moments when that time might be better served on cleaning my house, or writing the next film, or being with my children. But in the interest of coming out as fat-- and, to a lesser degree, in trying to find the value in the night the movie opened, despite my shame-- I will include a picture or two here. For those of you who don't know me, I'm the one in the black.

This is a picture of me with two amazing ladies who probably also have body insecurities, but I'm the only one who felt the need to write a damn treatise about it.

Here is a picture of me giving an insightful and witty answer to a question in front of hundreds of people, but I am fat.

For those of you out there who may have read this, and may be someone who has not struggled with weight, and maybe someone who still has some amount of judgment around overweight people, there are some points I'd like to get across. Number one, I assure you, it is NOT EASIER to just accept yourself than it is to lose weight, though, to be fair, keeping it off may be damn near impossible. But when I look at these pictures and try to imagine a future where I embrace my size and live with confidence and feel good about the tight, revealing dress despite the rolls-- I assure you, I could much more easily go without ever eating another roll in my life, though probably not through healthy means.

Number two, and this is a big one: whenever you encourage someone to lose weight, or judge them for it, or make them feel like they're more valuable as a thin person, what you're doing is telling them to reprioritize. You're telling them that the way they look to the world is more important than the things that they're putting their effort into when they're not putting effort into being thin, whether that be their job, their passion, or their family. No one has an infinite amount of energy or time: if you look at someone and determine that the state their body is in is bad for their health, you may very well be discounting the importance to their overall health-- including mental health-- of the things they've chosen over being thin.

I like to look at it this way: if someone came up to you and told you that you HAD to learn Chinese  you might tell them you're not interested. They might counter with the fact that there's a enormous number of Chinese people in the world, that the future of international business demands it, that we'd live in a more peaceful world if everyone could communicate. And all of their points may be true, but the reality is that learning another language is a huge investment of time and energy. Maybe you'd rather use that time and energy on learning Spanish. Maybe you'd rather use it building a boat. But your priorities are your own, even if that one person judges you.

Making the effort to be thin is just one choice people make. There's no moral weight behind the choice either way.

My priorities, in the past year, have been largely about this film. They've also been about carrying a healthy baby, and doing a job that helps to support my family, and maintaining my relationships. And I had a baby, and I made a film, and I sacrificed for those things. And I should be proud of them. I should be proud of being a woman who has learned the feminine art of juggling and overcoming. I should fight off the guilt that I have at the end of the day about the choices I made, and realize that my own priorities are valid, whether it's letting my husband watch the kids so that I go and create art, or whether it's having a Little Debbie Brownie at 2 am when I'm woken up for a feeding so that I don't lose my mind from exhaustion and frustration. My choices have reasons behind them, I should embrace them. I should be able to say, I am a worthwhile person.

But all I can say right now is "I am a worthwhile person, but I am fat."

On with it.

Only Gonna Say This Once

The perfect mix tape is an art form. When I've finished one, I feel as satisfied with that accomplishment as I feel with any art that I endeavor to create. Though I've forgotten it for many years, pushed it to the back of my consciousness while struggling to deal with the rest of life's realities, writing is like lifeblood for me. These posts, when they're done well. A poem. A song. And a mix tape, done right, gives me that same feeling of meaning, and accomplishment.

The one I'm listening to today, which I put together three or four weeks ago, is entitled "Only Gonna Say This Once." I designed cover art for it, but the whole thing never actually came to much of a physical reality. I never printed the art, or burned the mix to a CD, and I certainly never made it into a tape-- this isn't the early 90's. I use the term "Mix Tape" in the sense that Rob Sheffield, author of "Love is a Mix Tape", legitimized for me, as an homage to the first ones ever created, slowly and painstakingly pressing those mechanical buttons on one's cassette player.

This mix, which is really just a playlist, for now, was composed for someone that you, dear reader, know nothing of, because the entire overlap of his life on mine has happened in the months-- nearly a year-- since the last time I wrote an entry here. Given that, it's not so much the reader who has never heard of him, since the reader, at this point, is probably overwhelmingly likely to be either Emily or Jeff, or no one at all. More accurately, it's the character in my mind who doesn't know about him, the sentient version of the blog itself. Somewhere in my mind, I have personified the recipient of each and every key stroke, the reader of every word, ever since this whole damn thing began. Is it some amalgamation of everyone who has ever roamed these hallowed hallways of my mind? Is it some long lost friend, a sympathetic character who has some kind of imagined form, totally independent of the readers? Or is it just some strange reflection of myself?

Maybe all of the above. All I know is, I miss him. Her. It.

I miss him, too. The person I made this mix for. I made it as a means of mourning what I thought was the end of our relationship, determined to hand the physical version-- yet to exist-- to him as we said our final goodbyes. Shortly after it was finished, he showed up to tell me everything was fine, all my fears were just imagined. The mix didn't need to be made.

He showed up, one last time, to tell me that. And I felt like a fool for making the mix that I listen to now, alone in a room he'll likely never walk into, with him absent, once again, from my life.

Just goes to show you, kids. Always trust your instincts.

I knew at the time I strung the songs together that my reaction was premature. I know now it likely still is-- he may well be back. But, having lost him, temporarily, before, and seeing what the did to me the first time, I made the mix as a way to condense my mourning for the loss. I dove into missing him like an immersion course, hoping to come out on the other side quickly. Scars healed over, fluent in the language of heartbreak once again, and ready to move on.

I'm sure this all probably sounds super dramatic and a little overbearing. Full disclosure: I have been drinking.  Whatever it takes to write, I guess. Whatever it takes to be ready to talk about it.

The mix, and the mourning, they did their job. When, after that brief moment of coming back into the light and making me feel stupid for having doubted him, he never reappeared, I didn't fall apart. I was frustrated, of course, and angry at the deception, but I couldn't really give into sadness again. Who was this person, playing such childish games, and why should I weep for him anew? I'd done it all before, and very recently, so I mostly got on with my life.

He may well be back, even still. But that doesn't matter much. The next time he comes back, I will not be so starry-eyed, this time around, as to love him the way I did before. And I do love him. And I know that I will, when he comes back again, if he comes back again. So many things have changed about me, but that much remains the same, so far: when I love someone, I love them for good. In one way or another.

But the way I love him will have changed. I will not be so naive, not be so eager and innocent and childlike. I will not, I think, love him in such a way that I'll ever need to make a mix for him ever again, in his many comings and goings in my life. And many, I suspect, there will be.

The song now is "A Case of You" by Joni Mitchell...or it was, until just now, when it switched to a number by Bright Eyes. I was hoping to make some poetic parallel from the shots of Captain Morgan Cannonball I've recently ingested to the titular "case of you" that she sings of: "I could drink a case of you, and still be on my feet." But the moment has passed, as all moments do.

And in that way, the mix is doing it's job, yet again: I'll never love him the way I did then, but I can go back to it, now, listening to this. I can feel what I felt. I have captured some trace my younger self's heart, through a series of songs sung by a chorus of unrelated artists. And I capture this trace of my heart today, for an older version of myself. Maybe that's who the mysterious "reader" is.

So, whether he comes back or not, I will never have that moment again. This is all that is left of feelings I felt when I committed these songs to the memory of him, of us, of all that we were for such a brief, brief time. There was a lot to it, but, having aged and changed and matured-- no longer being someone who plays childish games or loves in starry-eyed ways, no longer someone who mourns every loss with a mix tape-- I haven't felt like I could talk about it here. Talk about who he is, and what we were, and what we could have been. There are consequences to that kind of honesty, and these would not have been mine alone.

Beyond that, so much time has passed, dear imagined friend.  How could you possibly understand it all with so little context?

There's not a lot I'm at liberty to say about how I felt about him, how I felt spending time with him and what I tried to make him feel, in return. There's not a lot I'm at liberty to say about the time we spent together, and what we hoped to accomplish, and the connection that brewed between us that made him, so quickly, the type of person I wrote songs for, and, so quickly, someone that I wrote songs with. And, most importantly in the context of this post, the type of person I wanted to share songs with, such that they became a perfect mix.

But if there's not a lot I'm at liberty to say, let me define him thusly: he was my partner. He was a creative who drew me out with his talent and believed in mine. He was someone I was determined to conquer the world with, me and him and our total brilliance. And, most importantly in the context of this post, he was the person who forced me to remember what writing and art really is to me. My lifeblood, whether it's a post like this, a song, a poem.

Or a mix tape, done right.

On with it.