Divisible by love
*In loving memory of a friend I only just met, but left a profound impact. His creative passion, humor, spirit and support with all he's known will live on forever. Here's to you, Markus D. Manley. You vision will live on.The next person who tells me everything happens for a reason is getting punched in the face. At the very least an eye roll.We get it. Life is hard. Shit happens. We are exactly where we're supposed to be.Fuck off.When the rug gets pulled from under us, leaving our bones shattered on the floor and our heads trying to figure out the why - a big "FUCK OFF" to the universe is warranted.It's been a few weeks since returning from my writer's workshop in Guatemala and I'm looking forward to sharing the life-altering ride. Timing has not been kind as of late.As if my Central American adventure wasn't enough to knock me on my ass, I returned home to the kind of news that flattens you. We know this pain. It's the type of agony that leave the fragments of what was once your whole and happy heart to suffocate your faith in the quiet space of an empty room. A place where you once breathed in love, and now sit with in solitude and wonder of how you fell so hard.We've all been there. Hit with insurmountable pain, not knowing why. Still, is the fact that we've all experienced anguish enough to earn the knowledge of why? Collective entitlement. Works for me. There are some kinds of pain we never overcome. We just learn to live with. The irony that we don't learn why - if we ever do - until the sorrow weaves her way into our blood is nothing, if not cruel.Ask anyone who's lost a loved one to an untimely death. Free and happy one afternoon, then you get the call - they're gone the next. Talk to a parent who buries their child. A lover who witnesses the loss of her partner's life after lacing fingers with them, wrapped in love just moments before. There will never be a why. And ever if there was, does it even matter? They are gone.Fuck you.I read a quote today that resonates. "Grief is divisible by love."Nothing will ever dilute the pain when our hearts ache. Not even knowing the why. We are all so fucking fragile and life is insane and fleeting.Instead of looking for answers, maybe it's best to let go of the questions.Surround ourselves with, when true and real will never escape us - what peels us off the floor and holds our hearts with one another in times of suffering - simply, beautifully, Love.Grief is divisible by love.