Episode 27: A New Hope

So... all of time and space, everything that ever happened or ever will - where do you want to start?

Happy Birthday, Tashi.

One year of being The Girl Who Waits, gone. Onto the next.

Someday, to join your TimeLord.

5 Days

Tonight I am looking at photos.

Of Before.

Of us smiling.

How handsome he was, and how full of hope and innocence we were.

I can't really recognize that girl. It is like looking at someone related to me, but generations removed.

I have the video from the first birthday of mine we spent together. 5 years ago.

We went to a State park and had a pic-nik. Salads and sparking sodas, ginger beer. Fruits.

Big blankets we used to spread out under the canopy of trees. Tee shirts and shorts weather. Kisses. 

He gave me the first season of Burn Notice on DVD and a card I still have.

We took a nap together until it was time to drive home. I believe it was a Sunday and I was working the next day.

We had been engaged 3 months then. Only a few people knew. We had decided to tell our families at the holidays in November.

I laughed so much that day.

I went so many years of my life with terrible birthdays. I even just stopped celebrating at one point.

But he gave me such a happy one that day.

My handsome man. My beautiful boy. My future. I could tell him anything and he still said, "I love you, darlin'. I'm not running."

I felt safe. I felt strong. I felt like I was balanced and truly loved and completely, unconditionally accepted.

I felt that anything was possible. Every good thought I had never dared to let myself contemplate was suddenly perhaps obtainable. 

Anything and Everything was possible.

He was my TimeLord that day. He made time stop. In that afternoon he gave me an eternity of joy, happiness, and love. Not just the tv show.

He helped me forget the stress of moving twice in two months. The hardness of some days only seeing him after his classes ended and coming to bed. 

That day was autumn air and sun, and the shadows of the trees moving in the wind.

That day was ours. 

That day was mine. 

That day was his gift. A love token. A foretelling of the good before the world crashed and stopped and burned. 

That last happy birthday I ever had.

The last one without the shadow of death. Just the trees.

The last one I did not wonder if I would be sharing my next year with him.

Just those long and everlasting happy hours.

That is what I mourn over. That is what comes to mind with the tears. That is the warmth I want when all I can think is the cold terror of the next birthday. Where it was unknown if he would live to see the next day. When everything odd and disturbing clicked together with his illness but in a horrid realization of how close to losing him I was. That long, long birthday night of forms, scans, doctors whispering, and for the first time seeing the tumor that had grown in his brain, and was going to eventually kill him.

That day, I longed for something simple like a DVD set. That day I wanted the trees and nap together, not the sounds of the Neuro ICU.

I think I would go back to that day, if I could. I would spend forever there, with him. 

Just us and the laughter and hope. The happiness. The wind. The silence. Being the only two people around in that wilderness that day.

He gave me that happy day. What I never thought possible. 

What seems lifetimes ago.

Maybe someday, this Girl Who Waits will see that magic blue box. I will know where to go. When to go. 

All of Time and Space... yes, I know when.

I will hear his voice whisper back to me, "As you wish. My darlin'. As you wish."

Heart Dump

I am just having a real shitty day. I was able to mostly keep everything in check at work and I skipped a break just so I could stay distracted with paperwork but I am just feeling so gorram sad right now. And guilty. And sad. And lonely.

I miss my husband. I miss spending autumn days with him where we would go on walks. Before and after he got sick. I miss baking for someone else. I miss cuddling up to him at night. I miss walking in silence holding his hand. I miss his smell on a jacket he would let me borrow. I miss the changing of the season when he would grow out his beard and it was five different colours all blended on his face.

I miss hearing something besides my own thoughts in this house.

I don't know why I am alive. Why he died. Why he got sick. Why it was brain cancer. Why it wasn't me.

He was a better person in his 28 years than I will be if I live another 50. In 13 months I will have lived longer than he did. 

And my birthday is in two weeks. The day we found out it was brain cancer, and he was dying. 

My heart and my brain hurt so bad.

I just want a hug. I want his arms around me. I want to believe the lie I told him; that everything would be ok. Because it is not. He's gone but I am not. 

I just want him back.

Short & Sweet

Well, I made it through the security and background checks, and got the call last night from my temp agency.
I got the confirmation from HR early this morning.

I go back to work, full-time (albeit as an at-will contractor for now) on Monday.

I am on the road back to financial independence.

I will be helping people in the health-insurance industry.
Yeah, I know. But it is in a good way this time.

I am scared, nervous, and excited.

I want them to want me- to have a long steady job. This place could even help lead to a career- they love to promote from within the company.

I have a commute of about 10 mins on the light rail and another 10 walking from my home to the LR stop. No worries about traffic, or parking for me in this case- which for now I am happy about. A month long metro pass is about the cost of a month of car insurance for me- but no gas, or constant working on my 17 year old (non working right now) SUV.

I am working to get myself to a better place, in a lot of ways.

It is a lot, but I think knowing I am doing good for other people who need help, who need the medical side of their life to be easier, will make me happy(er?).
At the least, for about 9 hours a day I hope to not feel quite so sad, so depressed.


It helps to have goals.




I still miss him. In different ways.
But I am trying hard to expand myself instead of withdrawing from the world. It hurts and it is not easy, but I feel it is something I have to do.