J. M. Prigmore

It's been an interesting year. Feels like things have been moving at a breakneck speed for months. One of my best friends died last February. Exactly a year ago today. That's why I'm writing this now. Need to get some feelings out, and also maybe start this blog up again. So I'm gonna get vulnerable for a minute. Pardon my dust.

When someone close dies, I imagine there's a myriad of emotions that most normal people feel. Shock, grief, pain, countless variations on those and more. I don't think I've felt normal versions of any of those even once. It still doesn't feel real to me, even now. Jeff and I had a 'disagreement', let's say, and hadn't been talking for a little while. In my mind, I was waiting for him to reach back out to me. I couldn't talk to him anymore, even if I wanted to. That's what was in my mind, so that I could give him the space he needed to figure some stuff out. 

Then he died.

Sometimes I still feel like I'm just waiting for a ping on my phone, a new Discord notification. He finally got his shit together, thinking that maybe I did too, and sent me that text. Maybe I still am waiting for it. I never got to see his body. There was never an obituary in the paper. His family didn't invite me, his wife, most of his closest friends, his found family, to the service for him. All we have are his belongings and a puck the size of a can of snuff of his ashes now.

How am I supposed to feel if I, like most of us who loved him, never even got the chance to say goodbye? 

We say goodbye in our own way. We take matters into our own hands. That's how.

The service we had for him was lovely. So many people came out, from all corners and even remotely, to say something about him. He had such an impact on so many people. He was so strong. He was also an ass. But that's what we loved about him. He was a person, flawed and beautiful in his totality. I miss him so much.

But life continues for the living. We don't get to stay stagnant. We have to keep moving forward, no matter what. If we stay put for too long, we begin to slowly die, and death is for the dead. I'm not dead yet. Even if sometimes it feels like it, I'm not dead yet. 

If you're reading this, neither are you.

So keep moving forward. Keep forging ahead, keep carving your own path. Do it for Jeff, do it for you, do it out of spite, just...do it. Keep living for those who can't. For those who couldn't. Keep going until you've got nothing left to give. Then, take your well deserved rest. 

Make your own fate
J. M. Prigmore