1. Chasing Cars
Have you ever heard a song that made you feel like you were a thousand dollars? That you were the subject? That someone finally understands? Well, I have a song like that. Let me tell you, never give that song up, okay? It will be the worst day of your life. The day you try to forget. The day you try to move on. The day you die inside. Okay, I hear you now, Whoa! Hazel, chill, it's just a song, okay? Don't be too dramatic here, girl. But I know that if you are thinking this, you don't understand. It doesn't make sense to you but to me it does. It's not just a song, it's what the song represents. It's the life, the memories that this song holds.
Today is June 4, 2014, it's pretty warm today, a light breeze. I like laying in the sweet smelling grass and just staring at the clouds. This is my song. The world just stops while I lay there and relax, I just remain, I just am. Nothing can change that, people just are. Today is one of those days where you say, I just am, nothing more. I have a purpose but today that doesn't matter, today is just a lazy day.
Mom and Kaitlyn worry about me when I am like this. Just lying in the grass but they don't understand that this is my safe place and I need a place to land. My safe place was ripped from me. I still see him, I see him at night, in the clouds, everywhere. I miss him but the tears have stopped; now he is just a sad fact and one of the best chapters of my life. I won't forget him, I love him, but he haunts me. My mom made me start seeing a therapist, her name is Julianne. Julianne believes that I let him control me, but she doesn't understand. He can't control me, he is gone, I control him. I can make him say whatever I want to hear, I can make him leave or stay or I can just make him lay in the grass with me.
When he died I asked myself, what is the point? Why do we go on? Why do we care? But time showed me that we don't "go on." We simply survive, that's what life is, you just are for another day and then your time comes and you just...aren't. He was and now he isn't, I miss him being here in my reality but I have to believe he is in his own reality now, that he can see me and laughs whenever I do something really stupid or he cries for me when I am in pain. I have to believe he is still with me. Julianne doesn't understand this either, she is a grief counselor, she wants to help me to move on, to forget, to not feel the pain anymore, but the pain, the memories are what I live off of, this is why I am, he is why I still am, I live for him. I know that mom and Kaitlyn and Julianne won't understand, neither will his friends or family or anybody, but it doesn't matter. He understands and I understand and for me that is okay.
…
Whenever I am inside I look back outside, I hate being inside, it makes me feel trapped. I hate being around people, they make me even more lonely, I can hear you again, Hazel, that doesn't make sense, you are lonely around people. What are you, mental? I don't know, maybe but I am tired of being so quiet and perfect for everyone around me. I will always be that girl that knew him to them, but I am just me. I am my own person and I do have feelings and a conscience, I just want to lay on the grassy hill, smell the sweet earth, feel the soft blades, look at the clouds and smell the summer. Hazel, you're not making any sense, you can't smell summer. Maybe you can't but I can.
Today is like that song by Snow Patrol. The one that is titled something about cars but the content has nothing to do with cars… "If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me and just forget the world?" That is today, that is now for me, today is Chasing Cars, and you know what? Life is just that, it's a song about Chasing a dream and it never turns out the way you would expect from the title. Never. Life is like sitting on the edge of a cliff, it's peaking over that edge and looking into the abyss. I am on the edge now, and I don't know if I'll ever look back.