an endless churn.

"i avoided shopping for the house because it was something mike and i always did together, but one day in may i decided i needed a new shower curtain. i drove out to the target on route 1. in the bedding section, i heard "when i'm gone" by 3 doors down come over the store's sound system. the song cut through my callused, comfortably numb hide.


i really tried not to cry when i was at home. crying in the house meant emotionally cursing our shared space--desecrating the temple of us. i had to keep it together, for mike's sake. i felt like i owed it to him somehow. so i'd confine my crying to the car. but not that day, not while the singer asked the woman he loved for four simple things: to hold him when he's here, to right him when he's wrong, to hold him when he's scared, and to love him when he's gone.


i turned down an empty aisle, wiping my eyes on my sleeve. soon i was weeping--for the reservists who put their entire lives on hold when called to duty, for the military mothers who had to keep their families together all alone, for the parents, spouses, sons, and daughters who were beset with worry, for mike, and for the soldiers who would never come home. i only meant to buy a shower curtain, and now, quite unexpectedly, right when i least wanted it, months of pent-up loneliness, fear, and frustration were pouring out in an endless churn of hot, silent tears."

these words were another section of the book that i highlighted. 
i know those hot, silent tears all too well...

and think of this passage whenever i'm discreetly wiping them away

on the shuttle to school

or

flying like a bat outta hell to turn off the pandora station 

that's playing michael buble's 'home'

{on the mumford & sons station, i swear!}

or 

when i have to skip handfuls of songs that come on my ipod.

like this one by ray. or this one.

april can't come soon enough.