aroraborealis | Because one day of Thanksgiving isn't enough (4 of 7)

I'm thankful for the friendship I had with

contessagrrl. It was uniquely wonderful in what she and I brought out in each other, in how we could join together in fun and play and delight in the world, in our fellow humans, in taking big bites of experience together.

She opened my mind and my world of experience more than any one other person in my adult life, not through any particular effort on her part, but by being who she was, and giving me the opportunity time and again to say yes to something new.

There's so much to miss about her, and I've been missing it for a long time, due to the effects of PTSD on her interior world and what that meant in our friendship, but I always imagined we would find our way back to each other somehow in the future, and I'm so sad to have that taken away from us. But more importantly, I'm so sad that she doesn't get to return to the world with her love of life renewed, as she worked so hard to do.

That's the thing that I think will always be the biggest part of my memories of her: that love of life, of exploration, of humans, of hedonism paired with a deep longing to be better.

I am thankful for her.