On Project Hope

Today was her birthday. She would be 21 today. Went to the beach; cut a cake, wrote her a letter, all the things I wanted to say but didn’t, and the goodbye I didn’t get to give, put it in a bottle and threw it in the sea. It will float to her, I know it will. She’s not dead, a part of her lives in me & everybody she loved, always will, until the day we die, it will live in the form of grief and all that unexpressed love. I hope I never loose this grief, cause in a strange way I feel really close to her in grieving her and in all that sadness I feel.

I don’t think she would have wanted me to spend 12hrs sulking in a bed all day and crying. That’s not what she deserves. She deserves more. The three of us made the pact today (she was the best of us). That each of us would live twice the lives we would have, twice the experiences we would, in hoping that small part of her that lives in us gets to have all those experiences. And maybe, just maybe, HOPE that the combined lives & experiences of the three of us could come up a teeny tiny bit to the life she could have had... she could have had.

I think that’s the only true way I can sew up that wound; only way I can honour the most kind, caring and beautiful person I ever met. Honouring her by living my life to the fullest extent. In hoping that the little part of her that still lives in me, it always will, gets to have those beautiful experiences she always wanted to have and talked about.

I decided to make a list... it’s gonna keep growing and I’m gonna keep coming back to check things off. And I want it to be public because I wanna be held accountable: to holding on to my words here.

So yeah:

• [ ] Go shadow/intern at a restaurant because she loved cooking and wanted to try it out one day.
• [ ] Work at a bar because she once mentioned the idea of moving to a new country and working at a bar as part time job like in the movies.
• [ ] Loved travelling; or at least the idea of it. Gonna do a solo trip to Spain, learn spanish in 30 days. Booked the flights just now. I think she’s gonna love it. Spain is just the start, I’m showing her all of Europe.
• [ ] Maybe join a soc and help run it. She was doing it when... I think I gotta keep that going on for her. She loved the part meet cool people that comes with running a society.
• [ ] Get a UK driving licence and get a car and drive up the Scottish highlands. She was gonna be applying for her driving licence soon...
• [ ] Save up a 12.5k fund in her name from all my gigs this year and I’m gonna use that as a starting fund for my sister to study abroad. She wanted to do a masters abroad.
• [ ] Go to a bar and get a date, we all suspected that she was a lesbo tbh and joked about her coming out of the closet. So yeah for her... yk what fuck it I’ll even kiss a guy if it comes to it FOR HER. But yeah dude fall in love, get heartbroken, fall in love again, get heartbroken again, and all that shmambo cause she still had so much of it to experience, so much...
• [ ] Recently for one my art course project I was going around all these shops in edi and talking to people and getting to know their stories. And oh boy there’s so so many stories people have to tell. I think I wanna start documenting all those stories. Yeah. I am gonna make these mini documentaries.
• [ ] I’m gonna learn back how to play a guitar and learn how to play her fav songs over this summer. And anyhow she needs to know how to play an instrument.
• [ ] Gonna start doing video logs on my blog. Cause fuck it why not? I always wanted to. I was always good at the writing part... might as well start to get good at the speaking part. Who tf cares about what people think. I am doing this shit. Do & try and as much stuff as I can.

This is just the tip. I am gonna be adding and checking of so so many things as I go on as time goes but yeah...

For hope.
For our pocketfull of sunshine.

This is not the end, this is not the end...