the year of dax you died one year ago today. you lay dead on the floor of someone else's home and none of us knew about it until two days later. everything has changed since then, everything i know about myself has changed since then. where your presence changed the lives of so many around you, your absence altered my life completely. i think about this every day. i think, i miss you. i'm sorry. i wish i had done things differently. i wonder if you understood me silently the way i felt i understood you, at least near the end of your presence in our lives. i wish i had made the time to talk to you instead of assuming that there would be time later. i wish that i had never been so self-righteous and egotistical when it came to your surreptitious cocaine use, but then i also know that you would understand (as i understand now) that it was easy to do because i knew nothing about it. it's always easy to condemn things you know absolutely nothing about, that is the nature of ignorance and intolerance. i am trying to honor your death by becoming a person who is loving, patient, understanding, empathetic. you knew what it meant to accept people exactly as they are, you knew how to encourage positive change through conversations rather than confrontation, and this is what i am very slowly learning to do as well. this year has taught me that i know nothing at all, that all the anger i have towards people comes from not understanding/not agreeing with the way they are doing things, and i am trying to remind myself that everyone has a part to play, that everyone is flawed, that acting the part of the judge reveals more about me than it does about the people i am condemning. we are all trying to survive in the only ways we know how, and if i want others to let me follow my path unhindered, i must be willing to do the same. |