Ok, I am just going to say it. I thought about how and I thought about when. I thought about you and I thought about me. About this and about where.

And here I am. Telling you in the only way I know how. I hope you hear me. I hope you see, that I still have you. I still hold you so incredibly close to me. To my heart. To my self. I wish I had you here, to hold your hand. To look at you and tell you how much I care about you. How much I love you and how much I would give anything to help you find another way through your troubles. There is not a week, a few days or a day that passes by me that I don't think about you. I don't think about the days we had, the smiles you gave me or the frustration I feel that I am here and you are there. After all this time, I still wish I could have helped you. I wish I could have run to you at that moment, looked you in the face just as you did me and remind you that no matter what else is happening, I would be there for you. I would hold your hand. I would hug you and above everything, I would tell you how much I love you and how if you did ANYTHING to yourself, no one else would matter but you and me and I would be so upset with you. When you spoke those words to me, I needed nothing else. I saw the sincerity in your eyes and the anger at my thoughts. I saw the strength in your words and the care in your hug. If only I knew what was to come.

When I think about the, what seems like, little time we had together, I wonder if there were signs. Moments that I should have seen you and what you needed. I wonder if there is something I missed. Then I realize, that is hopeless. I wish I had you here with me so I could say this all to your face. I don't and for all these years, I have wanted nothing else but that. To tell you everything. Most importantly, to tell you that I forgive you.

I am starting to see your path and your struggle. I hate to think that was your path. I hate to think you were alone.

Each and every time I think of you and the time we had, so many things come to me. I think about the endless days that you made magical, I think about the ideas you brought to life, the frowns you turned to smiles and the giggles to made into roaring laughter. I also think about the time you made me feel as if it was me and you against the world. That moment is in my mind and I struggle to understand why you did that to me. What you were trying to say, if anything. I was young and you were young. We were both trying to grow and figure this all out. That has been the justification I have given it. I can't, at all, think that you meant to be malicious or controlling. I just don't see you in that light. You were my cousin, my friend. Perhaps, at some point, I will come to understand what happened in those moments. You made it so, I can never be good enough for anything but. That makes me sad and I hate that thought more than anything I could ever express to you. Even still, I want to be angry with you. I want to hate you and see you as a bad person but I can't. I refuse. I want to keep you as the magic making, amazing person you were (are) to me.

For so long, I have been attempting to find an alternate route to 'fix' myself but I am coming to realize that in order to find the flowers, I must travel through the weeds. The ugly, overgrown weeds. I don't like thought and it frightens me uncontrollably. I am so afraid it might mean I need to let you go but I am trying to be reassured that is not what it means.

At this moments, I am looking for my rake.

I love you and I miss you but I am trying to understand.

'I am not RE-inventing anything. I am INVENTING something'

To invent means to envision and create. To think and build. To bring something new to a world of old. The idea of doing that is amazing. To think that you might add to a world where there is something for everything and everything for something is an incredible thought to me. It isn't as if this is Edison's time and the light bulb that was discovered decades earlier was being perfected, shedding light on the vastness of what the future of invention held. This is now.

This is me.

I might think of myself as a version of an inventor these days. I am imagining taking myself apart, piece by piece, laying each section in front of me and reassembling. I feel, as if, somewhere along the line or as I was being pulled from my mother, things were shifted. Thereby causing the future to require much more in the way of learning and seeing. Sometimes not making it through at all and losing any possibility of anything. That thought pains me. I think of everything I could have done, should have done or didn't do. I think of all the things I could have heard, should have heard or didn't hear. I want to make that different now.

The questions still remains. How do I go about reassembling. I wonder if when Edison came across the already discovered bulb, he knew exactly what he would do and went about it without hesitation. I wonder if he took one look at it and thought, 'This goes here and that goes there. I'll add this' and so on. Maybe he did and maybe he asked for opinions. I'll never know. What I will know (hopefully) is the steps in my invention. My invention of reassemble.

Now, back to me. As always..

This is a huge task I am putting on myself. Here I am at a point in my life that I feel I should have been, maybe not completely but for some parts, 10 years ago. I could go crazy. I could be angry, curl up and cry or scream uncontrollably but those actions have gotten me no where but here sitting in a somewhat comfortable position typing the thoughts in my head on the screen. In no way will they take apart the puzzle of me and fit the pieces back together as they should be. If I went on by that long enough, the pieces will crumble.

So? The the question begs.

HOW??

Where is the screwdriver? Where is the pliers? Where is the hammer, the wrench or the saw??

Where are the tools?

If I go long enough, maybe the tools will just appear or maybe they are under this hood marked 'STRONG'.