Value. I'm not much of a preacher. I seldom give advice. After all, it's not like my #life is a prime example of success. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to hand out a dose of the gratitude message to you. Value. Value your #life. And your family. And your friends. And your health. And your wellness. Value the fact that you woke up today, didn't get run over by a bus and didn't crash your car. Value the fact that you have loved ones. Value your emergency contacts, per se, for, when all else ceases to exist, they will remain a pillar by your side. It saddens me when people say 'you don't know what you got till its gone.' No. You should know. You have to know. You're obliged, as a pretext to being alive, to know. Relish in the appreciation of every moment and every gift. Relish in the miracle that is your existence. I know this is coming off as cliche and regurgitated off a really bad movie circa 1989, but something happened to me today that really made me reevaluate everything I once thought I stood for. No, don't 'live your #life to the fullest' if it means disregarding your family. No, don't seize every chance and manipulate every opportunity to get where you want to be if it means devaluing yourself. Value yourself. Value your #life. Value everyone around you and what they represent - from the local baker to the mother that bore you for nine months. And, for the love of god, value your health and the fact that you made it to this very day, owning an iPhone and looking through Opuss....

Ripped Apart We are a family ripped apart by death. To call us a family would be a gross overstatement. We are three beings, tied loosely by a common name and home, oblivious to each others’ existence. Our primary pillar has collapsed. Our name, the one we held so dear to our heart, the magnet that held us together has lost its force. Previously one bulletproof entity of love and support formed through the familial connection of four people, now a randomly tossed around amalgamation of three people whose hopes, fears, dreams, and lives no longer intertwine. It pains me to witness the disintegration of this once flawless family unit. Not only does it intensify the extent of my mourning for my father (as if I needed that) but I now also find myself mourning the connection, the unity, the love. I have not only lost a father. I have lost a family. I’ve lost a sense of security. A sense of rootedness. A togetherness. So, yes, I envy peoples’ families. When someone, even in passing, mentions what they did with their father last week or what he used to say to them or where they’re going on holiday next Spring, a pang of sadness and jealousy finds itself puncturing my chest. Its no longer a sense of ‘why me,’ though. That is long gone. I have to come to accept my inevitable fate of constant sadness and mourning. That to me no longer comes as a surprise but indeed a certainty and, ironically, an expectation for the days, months, and years to come. It is, however, a sense of longing. Longing like I’ve never known. Laced with soul-crushing sadness, and years worth of memories, this longing integrates itself into every vein in my body and thus encompasses me and every thought that crosses my mind. It is in every heartbeat, every flinch, and every blink. It is in every action I take and every word I say. Its in this paragraph and this full stop. To be frank, I have no idea where this post is going - as always. I just had a collection of feelings I had to set in *electronic* stone just to make sure I wasn’t going insane. I want my family, I want everything thats been stolen from me, I want whats been ripped away straight from my core. I want to hear your footsteps trudging their way up the stairs as you make your way towards the bedroom after spending endless hours laboring away in your office. I want to smell your citrus-laden hands that, every morning without fail, peeled two oranges meticulously and flawlessly before, as per your ritual, eating them whilst dissecting every headline in today’s paper - already stained now with your orange-juiced finger prints. I want to see another crossword puzzle filled perfectly and strewn beside your bed on the floor as you tossed it after the mental challenge of completing it drained you and you fell into a deep sleep that the whole house feared waking you up from. I want you to tell me to clean my room. To switch off the lights. To study at a table and not in bed. To stop writing on my hand. To shine my shoes. To say goodnight. Its the little things, dad. The damn little things that rip me apart.

Funeral A shuffling of feet. A slurp of strong, black, bland tea. A clearing of the throat. A sea of black. A cough. A sneeze. A whimper. A funeral. Dear Old Man whom I never met, your funeral is bleak, and cold. Your visitors awkward and clearly present only because of obligation. Like me. Dear Old Man, I hope you can see this. Surely this isn't what you wanted. A granddaughter weeps tearless, silent, tears of over acted misery. A distant relative trailing the hands of the clock with their eyes. Has enough time passed for it to be deemed alright for them to excuse themselves? Eyes reeking with a lack of sensitivity dart around the room. What am I doing here? Did I even know this man? Black is so not my color. Is his daughter wearing a red bra under that top? Oh how scandalous! Their thoughts, much like their eyes, whizz soundlessly throughout the atmosphere like mosquitoes on LSD. Dear Old Man, wherever you are, I apologize for the insincerity of humanity. I apologize for their lack of understanding. I apologize for not wanting to be here. I apologize for your insignificance.

Crying The worst type of crying is when you don't know why you're crying. When the world feels like its shattering its way all down your shoulders and you have no idea why. The tears stream down your face, people ask why and you don't have an answer. Not to yourself and not to them. Not to anybody.

Growing Up It's the strangest thing. Years pass, your date of birth gets further and further from the present, you're expected to act the number that represents you and all the dreams you once had for your 'future' turn put to have been just that... dreams. It's funny. I remember the thoughts and feelings and hopes and dreams and fears and joys of five-year-old me like I had them just yesterday. I remember the childish mentality I adopted so carelessly back then. I remember the things I did and why I did them. The justifications I had back then still make sense now in my teenage mind - one, since these innocent childhood days, has long been subjected to pain and heartbreak. So it's funny. Age is funny. 'Acting your age' is a phrase I admittedly don't understand. If the thoughts I had way back when still make somewhat sense to me, yet I acknowledge they would be unthinkable for someone my age, why do I find it do incriminating to even have them cross my mind? Yes, I was scared of teenagers when I was five, and now I am a teenager, afraid of adults and the baggage that comes with them - some of which I already, unfortunately, possess. Age is a strange thing. One that beckons me towards an eternal fear and sadness. Not that I don't want to get older - I do - but I don't want to lose even more of my innocence and naivety. The more circumstances one is subjected to, the more their blind optimism and fearlessness is etched at. Soon it will no longer exist. I'm sure. Soon, I will be even more jarred than I already am. I will be more shattered. I will broken up in an even bigger set of pieces. It will hurt more. Or less? Perhaps experience will breed immunity? Who knows...