I appreciate each of you so much and the love you've extended to me in my time of need is beyond generous. It's beautiful and humbling and inspiring and it's helping my heal, however slowly.
I know you guys want to know how I'm doing and I feel that I owe it to everyone who cares to be honest. I'm not doing well. I'm very sad and hopeless. Every day I wake up and feel tremendous loss and emptiness without my sister here. Each time I mindlessly pick up the phone to call her I feel like I'll never recover. I'm using all of my energy and effort every day to try to return to training my clients and working out. I spent most of the past five weeks lying in bed and crying. I am genuinely sorry I haven't been able to thank this city properly for all of the love and support extended my way, but small tasks feel insurmountable lately. Answering a text is bizarrely difficult. Having wine with friends sounds safe, until after a second glass I start crying and need to race back to the comfort of my own bed.
I am shaken. I feel that I don't know anyone or anything and can't trust even this moment, right now.
I know - these words are a little frighening coming from me. My nature is annoyingly positive. I am used to waking up to delicious coffee, bright sunshine, and this beautiful job where I get to make others happier. I've refered to my time in Philadelphia for the last seven years as "The Charmed Life of Jess," not so jokingly. I've been incredibly blessed with clients and riders turned friends. I've treated every day as an adventure and lived a lot of life in a small city in a short amount of time. It's the only way I know how to be. Nothing feels right anymore. It's frightening to have such a huge part of who I am, my joy, disappear so instantly and entirely. I can't find that happy person I was. I'm walking around lost and listless.
But this is the part where the tiny, tiny, glimmer of Jess appears. I forced myself back into a workout on Memorial Day. Of all days, I was able to put my pain aside to acknowledge great sacrifice and love and force myself out of bed. I drew on the energy and love of my family at Crossfit Rittenhouse and completed a brutally challenging workout (Murph, for those of you who are into that sort of special torture). It was the best hour I've lived in the past 38 days. I felt myself ease into encouraging others without thinking, high fiving and embracing sweaty bodies in tight hugs. I promised myself that day that I would attempt this week to say a thank you to all of the wonderful people in this city who came together to support me.
Thank you. Thank you for your donations, for your messages, for your hugs, for your generosity. You've invited me into your homes, you've offered every kindness, and you've made me feel a little less awful. I can sense that this city believes in me and I hope you're right for doing so. I want to find pieces of myself again, some of the joy and grit I once knew myself to have. I promise I am trying. I will keep trying. I don't expect I'll ever be the same. I'm incomplete. But I promise to do everything I can to be a little more of the Jess you know and love. I'm honored to have an enormous and gracious group of people behind me. Thank you for holding me, for loving me.
I love you.