Day 10

My first day of spring break.
I had slept poorly. The apartment was so cold when I awoke, strange and shivering. I checked my phone. It was around 6am and Kayla was long gone to work. I burried my head back under the pillow. Every part of me ached, and throbbed. My head, my throat, my eyes, my back. I stretched and then recoiled quicked because of the cold air. This was horrible. I couldn't take this. I just wanted to go out to my car and drive away to somewhere warm, like New Orleans, and get a warm hotel and crank the heater up to 94 and sleep for a week.
I hadn't realized I'd fallen back asleep, but I remember waking up to a text message. Not from you, of course, but from Kayla asking me to take the dog out as soon as I got up. The dog was no longer sleeping with me, and I could hear it in the other room. She had probably locked it in its cage.
Go to church? Or no?
Honestly, I felt exhausted. I felt... weak. Weak is a good work. Weak, and cold.
Even Mary's church wasn't an option. I needed rest, I needed healing physically as well as spiritually and emotionally.
I slept, and then I got up and took the dog out. Got dressed in something totally non HA (this was my first day of break, you know) and drove to work to check the schedule. I went to the gym because it was right next door, but only tanned. The warmth of the radiation pulsing into my skin helped give me a little energy, but left me more parched than ever.
Spiritually parched, too.
I drove and drove. Gas was so expensive, but I didn't care.
Remember that night at the park on Grand Boulevard? The day I chased you down, 21 days into the silence? I wept in your arms because I had stumbled and done something incredibly stupid. Well, I couldn't just shrug it off anymore. If God was to fix you, bring you back, then I needed him desperately to clean out my heart, too. I just needed to get right with him. All the bitterness, the brokenness, of years and dreams and so much hurt and loss.... I had done this before, but it was time again. And God listened to my broken sobs and held me close and let me be real and honest with him... and he loved me. Despite my faults, despite my shortcomings.
And I got things right with him.
I drove back home late that night, more weary than ever, but refreshed in my spirit.
It was time to start letting God renew my spirit, renew a right spirit in me, so that my dad and you could be proud of me.
Kayla was excited to see me but we were both tired and just went straight to sleep.
Tomorrow, she said, let's do something.
Dear Levi, how I still love you. I don't want to spend this break so far away from you, and without you.