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.

Sorry, friends. My Internet has been down for a bit: I will update when I can find a place with free WiFi and can bring my notebook with me to fill everyone in.

All things go right, I should be working by mid-week! 

Potentials

Well, I have an interview today and another on Friday for some potential temp jobs.

Still waiting to hear back on any others.

I am putting in at least 5 job applications daily now. 

I am trying to stay as positive as I can and hope that something will come of all of this. 

Fingers crossed for me, friends.

Thank you to everyone who is donating, sharing my need, and trying to help me network or connect with a job.

Unknown Emergency

Well, I am quite fucked. 

I have $1200.00 in rent (overdue) and all city and state services cannot help me. The local church and Salvation Army services cannot help me.

I have $132.00 of utilities overdue for this month, and having electricity to keep my fridge running and the AC set to 86F because it is still in the 110sF is also kind of needed.

I have no idea how much longer my Internet will stay on as that is overdue too.

I have been looking for work. Anything. 

I have $2.75 to my name right now. I can't even afford a single ride bus ticket.

I am hoping to hear back on some interviews this week, but I am getting quite depressed about it.

Because Wash is dead and I have no children there seems to be no desire on the State or Federal levels to help me. My family has done all they can/are willing to do.

I have put off seeing the doctor for medication and asthma check up because I cannot afford the $5 co-pay they have set for me.

I have sold things, and I don't have much of anything of value left to sell.

I never got Wash's $200 some odd dollar "death benefits" from Social Security that next of kin is supposed to get. When my grandmother died it took about 6 months for my mum to get the money. It's been 12 months for me.

I have no place to go. No where to take my cats. I am not strong enough emotionally yet to leave this house. Soon, but not *now*.

I don't qualify for unemployment but the State wants to see copies of Wash's death and copies of his medical files anyway to back up that I "chose" to leave my paying work in 2010. Which, I did, but since the State then had tried more than once to cancel his health insurance if I kept working-and making around $400/month at the time (not enough to cover living, and chemo, and food) it was not really a "choice". It was become poverty stricken and get medical help for him, or let him die from cancer right then.

I really don't know what to do.

I don't know who to ask for help anymore. 

There was no life insurance to take care of me. There were no benefits to help me get through my desire to die after he was gone. Those feelings are certainly surfacing again.

At this time, I am feeling pretty hopeless.

I will be filing for bankruptcy soon, but even that will not help me now.

Aside from my cats, I have lost everything. 

Despair is a pretty accurate word.

So often now I just wonder if it would not have been better if I had been allowed to die with him. 

I wish.

Visual Memories

Oh, Sweetie- Spoilers

River: Funny thing is, this means you've always known how I was going to die. All the time we've been together you knew I was coming here. The last time I saw you—the real you, the future you, I mean—you turned up on my doorstep with a new haircut and a suit. You took me to Derillium. To see the Singing Towers. Oh, what a night that was. The towers sang, and you cried. You wouldn't tell me why but I suppose you knew it was time. My time. Time to come to the Library. You even gave me your screwdriver. That should have been a clue. There's nothing you can do.

The Doctor: Let me do this!

River: If you die here it'll mean I've never met you.

The Doctor: Time can be rewritten!

River: Not those times, not one line. Don't you dare! It's okay. It's okay. It's not over for you. You'll see me again. You've got all of that to come. You and me. Time and space. You watch us run!

The Doctor: River you know my name. You whispered my name in my ear. There's only one way I would ever tell anyone my name. There's only one time I could.

River: Hush now. Spoilers.




I am watching Silence in the Library and Forest of the Dead and thinking of just how ironic that story line truly is to me.
Those were the first episodes of the new Who reboot I ever saw. Shortly before we got engaged. Wash begged me to try the show, knowing I loved the classic Doctor from before.
I fell for Donna and her frustrations at dieting in a virtual world.
I fell for River as a strong and not helpless female character.
I fell for The Doctor, for his dedication and tenacity. 

I had already fallen for my love, my Wash, my TimeLord. 

I miss you, Sweetie. 

Complications

I have a lot to say but it is taking me some time to really process everything and get my thoughts into a reasonable verbal sense.

I am tired of being reduced to just "someone who is depressed".

Yes, I have Depression. I have had it for a bit over a decade now. Yes, my biological Depression certainly plays a part in how I live, how I process things, how I feel.

But losing a spouse is much much more than that. This is not something that finding the "right" type of medication, or exercise, or getting a roommate can change.

This is me dealing with losing everything I loved. Dealing with the loss of my best friend, my husband, my future children, my future homes, dealing with the death of how I should have been spending my life.
This is coping with not wanting to wake up each day, because I do so in a empty bed that used to be warmed by another person. A specific person.

Do I believe that I can find another friend? Of course, eventually.
But it is not the same as my best friend; the person I could talk to without ever saying a word. The person who taught me as much as I taught him. Who shared my hobbies, my loves, my dislikes.

His presence is still all around. It is something I cannot escape. I cannot run from this, or hide. Sleep gives me no real reprieve, as I see him there too.

I wish it was easier to help people understand this pain I am going through, the depths and the unceasing of it, but at the same time I wish this pain on no one. No one.

How to put into words the emotions of feeling left behind? Of knowing a whole long life is no longer something that makes me happy, in fact, the idea of living another 6 decades or so is so burdensome as to render me speechless and immobile?
How to convey that the pain never goes away?

Let me repeat; the pain never, ever goes away. 

Time does not heal this wound. Time does not give me scar tissue, or protection. It merely lengthens the amount of pain I live through in every second, minute, hour, day, week, months.
It never ends.
An ocean of madness and sadness and despair.

I am just getting better at acting. At pretending. At hiding my feelings because the people around me themselves grow tired of hearing of the pain.


I just want to wake up from this pain, misery.