You should be 23 now

How is it that five years have passed, and your absence still grows and scoops out more of me as time goes on? I feel like I have less to give than ever before. I'm so tired, so incapable of giving to those I love the way I want, the way I used to be able to. I'm just so much, so much less.

To give with an open heart to all who needed or wanted—that was your gift, not mine.

Your openness and honesty gave me courage to show myself more, and I'm still wrestling with whether or not that's a good thing.

What if I cocooned myself again? How terrible would it really be? I was raised to be the strong one, and I always had been. To show weakness is such a vulnerable thing. So few have been allowed to see it. So few have ever seen me cry. I'm not pathetic. I won't be that pathetic thing I used to be. The high-maintenance one. The emotional one. It's been so long since people called me that in my adolescence, and I'm no longer that person.

I am controlled. I am put together. That's how they describe me now, and I fought with all my might for it.

I won't forget again how precious that vulnerability is, how you affirmed me for protecting it, how you protected it for me.

"Arwen, who gives her love to only a select few, as she should."

Thank you.

I miss you.