Precious, resilient life.

So many times I have battled against you – against what is natural.

What is natural is to live if you are already alive. I have battled against Life itself.

This year I watched my grandmother die through the eyes of her husband, holding her, crawling into her death bed and lying there right beside her. He did not want her to go. She did not want to leave him. I watched from a dream where grandma was young again, in red, and proud of me. At the funeral, I touched her lifeless hand. Touched her hand. Touched her hand. Saw her freckles, her age spots, her skin for the very first time - the very last time. I wished nothing more in that moment than to be able to engrave each and every beautiful blemish into my mind forever. The exact “imperfections” we try to eradicate with make up, erase with surgery, airbrush from photographs or punish with self abuse are the exact things our grandchild will struggle against letting go – fight to hold on to when our skin’s gone cold.

At best we get one hundred years - one hundred autumns, one hundred springs. At best we pass in our lover’s arms, not ready to go, but becoming so astonishingly quickly. At best we know how precious life is while we have it, romancing our own heart beat, making love to each breath, our lives becoming one sexy scandalous affair with ourselves---at best.

This year I understood depression as an adult who is scared. As a woman who has been through it many times before, but never quite like this. I thought it was over, the Darkness won, the will to live obsolete. If I woke this morning on my twenty seventh birthday crying, it is because I finally understand how precious, how fragile, how fleeting life truly is. But if I woke this morning to cry at all, it is because life is resilient, strong and wild.

This year my best Chicago girlfriend, Olivia, gave birth to a baby girl.

One hundred years is not nearly enough.

Today I map my freckles.

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