"How are you?"

The morning that the news of Dres' passing started to spread online, my best friend, Daisy, called me. "How are you doing?" She asked. I stammered. My mind went blank. I felt like an answer existed somewhere, I just didn't know where. She then said, "I see you're still processing, it's okay, I'll call you later." I continued to hunt for words. "No, I-" and I froze again. She responded with, "it okay, I know you're processing, I'll check in later."

Although his death was 3 days ago and I'm in L.A. now, I'm very much still figuring things out. I got a text from another friend, checking in. I looked at his text and struggled to answer. I'm normally pretty quick to respond to text messages, but I just looked at his. I wasn't able to formulate words until the following day, apologizing for the late response, and explaining that truthfully, I'm still figuring out how I feel and I just didn't have the words. How do I feel? I have no idea. I was also lucky enough to chill at one of the Apple offices with a friend of mine, a buddy from Atlanta. And once we settled in, he said to me "I know how things have been rough lately. How are you feeling?" I searched for the words, but there were none. My mouth hung open slightly, and my eyes started to water. "I get it," he said, before moving on to other topics.

A small part of me wishes I was at home in Atlanta, to be part of all of the celebrations. But truthfully, a larger part of me is grateful to be in a city where Dres tha Beatnik isn't a household name. I'm enjoying the anonymity of being able to walk down the street and not having people kindly ask me the most natural question you'd ask someone in my predicament. Another issue I've heard a few times is "yeah, this is rough, but I know you were really close to him, so I can only imagine how you feel." This isn't the grief Olympics. There's room enough for all of us to feel like shit.

Another buddy contacted me last night and asked how I was. The most I could muster was "numb." He went on to say that we should  organize a festival or large concert in Dres' memory. I still have the notes from the fundraiser, including the bands Dres wanted in attendance. I suppose I could make it happen, if I tried. But the fact is that right now, I'm barely holding it together. I do not have he mental bandwidth to put together a concert of some sort, or even start preplanning one.

I'm thankful to not be at work. The day before Dres died was Pete's birthday. And I managed to field two calls from people at work, who were calling for support with grief. I gave a small nod to my own pain in both calls by saying "believe me, I understand how you feel," without letting on that I was in my feels about my own angel's birthday. And I held it together pretty well, in part, because Pete died 8 years ago. I still miss him daily, but I can at least talk about it now. I can laugh about the good time and smile and be grateful to have gained another protective angel. But I'm just not there with Dres yet.

I'm currently sitting in Hilltop Coffee, in Inglewood, Issa Rae's coffeehouse. I never realized until today that it's literally around the corner from Sip and Sonder. It's wild to me that the more time I spend here, the more familiar this city is to me. I told a guy, just last night, how at home I feel with him. Atlanta will always be home, but I love knowing that L.A. is becoming my home away from home.

I'm leaving L.A. in a few hours, heading north, to Monterey, which is also on the long list of my favorite cities. I don't know anyone in Monterey, so I won't be met with glances from social media friends who somehow want to see me breakdown, in a show of pain for my departed friend. I get it, people loved Dres, and as a show of respect to him, they want to make sure that his people are good. And I'm definitely his people. I wanna say I'm good. But I can't. I guess something is forming, in terms of an emotion, but I have no clue what it is, just yet.

I've lost so many people close to me over the last few years. It's becoming unreal. I feel like my social media is littered with nothing but pictures of me and people that I've lost. One of the lessons that I've taken in grief is that no two losses are the same. I've had moments where I felt guilty about crying about one dead loved one, and not another, and I had to remind myself that all of the losses are valid, and crying about one person doesn't mean that the other losses aren't just as important.

Like when Ali died, I remember feeling like every cell in my body hurt. Like even my hair follicles were hurting. When Andrea died, I felt like something beautiful had been snatched from me. And when Pete died, I just felt hollow, like my right arm was missing and I struggled to fill in the void that his sudden absence felt. And now that Dres is gone, I'm just...