13 years, 99 years.

this week marks the anniversary of a couple different things. both of which kind of baffle my mind for different reasons.

for one - a couple days ago i realized that it has officially been 13 years since peter and i started dating. yes. thirteen years.

our relationship is officially a teenager.

i think the hardest part about that is simply the fact that i was a freshman in college 13 years ago. it doesn't feel like it has been that long. there's a part of me who still feels like a 22 year old kid completely unsure of what to expect from life.

it just gets back to the idea that you will always feel too young for things. pretty much no matter when they happen there are certain milestones in life that you will always feel unready to tackle. i often look around and think, "i thought 31 would feel different. i thought i would feel older at this point." and then you realize that we're all just sort of flying by the seat of our pants.

yes, we have plans. yes, we look ahead. but no one entirely knows what to expect when they walk into a new situation, or a new year, or a new chapter.

i digress.

thirteen years is a while. but then i think about my grammy.

grammy would have been 99 today.

i feel like i don't even have the words to express everything running through my head right now. grammy was one of the best people i've ever known. i recently told my uncle that even though she died at 92 it still felt like she went before her time. how strange is that?

how strange is it to think about a 92 year old dying too young?

but that's how it felt.
that's how it feels.

i can still hear her voice in my head saying i love you. i can still see her face light up on the day i arrived for the last week i spent with her. i can still see what she looked like when i was a little girl, and the first time i realized she was getting older.

grammy loved people, and she didn't shy away from telling the truth.
i never wondered if she loved me, or if she was proud of me. i also never wondered if she was upset with me about something. she didn't exactly mince her words.

she hated getting older. she hated that there were things that she couldn't or shouldn't do anymore. with few exceptions she still did most of the things she shouldn't do anymore, and usually tried to do everything she couldn't do anymore.

she was the best kind of spitfire, and i miss her.
happy birthday grammy.
i love you.

xoxo