Happy 31st birthday!

Enjoy this hidden and private from the interwebs (unless you know the URL) birthday message!

A text message did not feel like enough this year. But, to be honest, a text message never feels like enough.

I was thinking back on all of our years a few days ago. What a massive maelstrom of happiness, excitement, and sadness…intertwined with so many hopes and dreams, both lost and achieved. Years of maturing…me not so much at first, you maybe way too much (you always were an 80 year old woman at heart). Did you ever see us where we are in our lives right now?

I guess if you truly analyzed our lives, we did see ourselves here in a small way. I always saw myself as a teacher. An educator and a scholar dichotomy. Somehow I found my way into the educational industry…maybe through the longest, most convoluted path humanly possible…and the direct nature of my field requires that I never stop learning…ever…for eternity…huzzah! Life achieved!

Did you see yourself where you are?

I always thought your Nancy Drew obsession would blossom into some Criminal Justice fortitude that would mar the dark underground with your righteous fury of good and right. Or, maybe that was just a Nancy Drew mystery game I’ve long forgotten. I guess you did find your way into fighting for the rights of children, you just never realized those children would be your own. Three of your own, adorable, lovable, bursting with emotion and passion children. I will never be able to express to you how much love I have for those cute little guys and how happy I am that, even for a few years, I had the chance to be a part of their lives regularly.

Their Uncle Larry isn’t going anywhere soon. I am ecstatic to watch their lives and infinite possibility grow and evolve over time, just like ours did. But, we have already made it through the many minutia of evolutions they have yet to even discover. No, we are facing life in deeper, more complex ways than we ever could have imagined. Pain that we never could have fathomed.

I wish I could be there today to hug you. To tell you, “Happy birthday!” and that everything will be okay, in person. Life can be so hard, occasionally harder than we sometimes think we can handle. I know life feels hard right now for you. A wave that feels like it is crashing down and suffocating any happiness you try to feel or grasp hold of before it fleets away. I promise that wave will subside. It starts slow at first, but becomes faster the more that you embrace all the people around you that love you so much. Even if they may not show it exactly how you want, it will always be what you need in the end. Love always is.

It took me so long to figure that out. I let years of depression and cynicism meld with an intelligence I quite frankly had no earned right to wield, a privilege I only recently have come to acknowledge and exude my gratitude to this chaotic universe that blessed me with such immediate understanding wrought from so little effort. I receded from so many people that loved me and lost myself in all the chaos, but I always saw your guiding light. You were always a role model that I strived to emulate in my darkest times. But, what I really wanted to emulate was that massive love that you give so willingly. The love that causes you to break down crying every single year on your birthday because your idiot friend can’t help be remind you how wonderful you are and how wonderful life can be.

I hope you have so much love given to you today. Thrown at you from every direction, with no escape. I hope it feels bigger than the wave that threatens you so hauntingly during the quiet moments of your day. Cascading the doubts and fears and grief, replacing it with the immense joy of three little souls that dream of you as a superhero flying through the darkness, fighting their monsters and worries; knowing you will always be a guiding light of love and hope when they feel it the least. Let all their love in today, because you deserve every bit of it.

I hope you find a way to see a vision of your future, full of happiness, excitement, and a even a little bit of sadness; but, know that it won’t be exactly what you glimpse, because this universe has infinite possibility and you simply have to choose a path to see what will become. Every day will lead to something new, making yesterday hurt a little less, and you will begin to admire your memories a little more, even the painful ones, because they have molded you throughout life to become the guiding light you were always meant to be.

I love you so much, Kelsey. I know that this decade hasn’t began the way any of us thought it would, but don’t forget the infinite possibility. You are an amazing bastion of goodness, love, and hope and this decade has only just begun. Greatness is ahead of us, we simply just have to keep moving forward.

Happy birthday dearest friend and Sister. You will always be the other side of the same coin in my life, and I will always be here for you, even when we are far, even when times are hard, and even when the wave feels unstoppable. I hope 31 shows you the path that flourishes the bright and guiding light of this decade that so many of us already see trying to burst out from you. Let it.