My Heart Hurts

I am 26-years-old.

Twenty-six.

In the grand scheme of things 26 years isn't really anything. It's just a blip in the timeline of the universe.

I feel like I'm barely even beginning to live.

Today I went to the funeral of the mother of one of my newest baby dancers. She was found in her apartment a week ago. She had overdosed.

I found out tonight she was only 26.

She was the same age as me. 

I think that's what's shocked me the most. No. that's not what shocked me the most. But I wasn't expecting us to be the same age.

She was born on Valentine's Day, 1986. 

She seemed older.

Not that that makes it any better. It makes me sadder. She looked older, she seemed older, maybe because she had led what I keep hearing everyone saying, a "rough life."  

When someone dies we forget all the bad.

It doesn't do us any good to dwell on it.

According to her family, her friends, she had an amazing life. She was an amazing person. She had everything going for her. She was so happy.

And yet it leaves me to wonder why we were all crowding the funeral home crying if everything was so fantastic?

We do not want to think about the grim realities. So we comfort ourselves with our happiest memories of the person we lost try our hardest not to think about why they are gone. It does not do us well to dwell on that pain.

I wish I had known her.

I think we would've gotten along really well.

I'd only met her a couple of times.

And that's all I'm ever going to know her and I am sorry for that, there is no changing that now.

But like Pris told me all we can do is love her little girl as much as we can.