"to be or not to be"

so this is it. this is what my life has become. not what i had worked so hard for. not what i had dreamed of as a little girl. all my tiny little dreams unmet or altered in such a way as to become punishments rather than blessings.

i had wanted to be safe and for less than two handfuls of years, with my Dragon, i was.

i had wanted a family. i have daughter and a son who i kept safe to their adulthood at great cost.

i had wanted a home. i never had that. first, it was his property, and then my Dragon and i were thrust into poverty and rentals and moving, always moving. but the children were safe and getting their college educations and that was what mattered at that time.

now i am not safe, my children are grown and no longer need me, and i have no real place. i am struggling and fearful and what is worse, now i must face all this alone. there is so much pressure to simply survive. roof. lights. food. and along side the barest of necessities more pain and longing than i have ever known. i miss his strength. i miss his arms. i miss laying beside him in the dark.

i hurt so much tonight. i can hardly breathe. and hope? where is it? why am i struggling to find it? i thought i could do this. i thought, maybe i could get a handle on this, but i am failing, i think. i am rock bottom and yet, i know i can get lower. i feel terrible and yet, i know i can feel worse. i am scratching in the dirt for hope of some kind, for some thing to turn around. i keep telling myself, "this is as bad as it will get. hang on." and then something happens and i am back to fighting for a single breath that does not have panic pressing down on my lungs. who am i anymore? i am not wife. i am not friend. i am a widow and yet, i do not seem to do that right.

forsaken. used and turned away from. unnailed, uncoffined, unknown. i do not remember where i read that, but it popped into my head tonight.

abandoned soul.

but i keep waking up. why? what for? how, when i go to bed in such pain? i go to sleep and i almost do not care. but i keep waking up. there must be some purpose, some reason i am still here. what? my children are safe and grown. he cannot touch them anymore. i was with my Dragon when he died so that he was not alone. that job is done.

maybe i am here for my two little dogs. i love them and they need me. we are true companions. maybe i am here for the quilts. the set of 3 quilts i have been commissioned to do at this time are very, very heavy with embroidery. very heavy embroidery of images that hold special meaning to the family. thousands and thousands of stitches. it all has to be done by hand. so maybe i am here for the quilts.

tomorrow i go to check on my application i put in for a job at Build-A-Bear. yes, the store where i bought Bunny, the star of all my photographs and her own Facebook page. she gets a lot of traffic, a lot of questions asked of her. there are people who will miss her being online when they do not even remember me. i post her in the third person and i have actually be sent an email telling me to "let her speak for herself." you have got to be kidding me. seriously? i wrote back that she signs to me since her lips are only embroidered on. i got back an, "oh, okay." truly surreal, but definitely not boring. Bunny laughed.

i do not know if i am going to make it. i do not know what else life is going to shove down my throat. but if i keep on waking up in the morning, then i will get out of bed. my dogs will need to go outside for walkies as Wallace would say. i have a ton of embroidery to do. i never stopped reading a book before i finished it. and i have only walked out of one movie in my entire life and that was after a very graphic scene involving piano wire as a garrote. some of those Japanese films get a little too much for me.

it hurts to breathe tonight. it hurts to think about getting up in the morning. it hurts to be so lonely and yet i cannot seem to find anyone who will sit with me, stay with me, even for a little while that doesn't involve using me for my hands. {that sounds wrong but you know what i mean} the counselor i was talking to seems to think i am fine and her caseload is crammed. she says i am articulate and aware, that i am working through my issues on my own very well through my writing {apparently i "really know how to convey a thought"}, and that i am handling my solitary isolation with the "grace of a cloister." she was actually impressed with the number of hours i am alone. 16 - 20 hours a month. that's the extent of human contact that i have. out of a month i cannot make up the hours of one full day spent with another human being. face time as she called it. oh, and yeah, if i feel like taking my life, i am to call her. but she knows i am not the type. i took the test. i passed. flying colors. otherwise, ttfn.

and then there were none.

so here i am tonight. and i am tired, and dejected, and hurting so much. i am reaching out, but it will be hours, or days before anyone may read these words, and figure out what to say in response, if there is anything to say. apparently i am doing fine on my own.

so i will handle it on my own. i will force myself to calm down. i will do what i always do. i will turn my mind to him. i may go outside on the balcony, in the darkness, and watch the moon. i will close my eyes to the cool breeze and remember the feel of his hands. i will call up his voice. i will let it wash over me and take me far away from this place.

i will try to remember, and accept, that once; once i was loved,

and he did not leave me.

it took an act of God to take him away from me.

i will remember the time i had with him and what we meant to each other. i will remember how we looked at each other and knew, we just knew how to communicate without words. then i will go to bed and try to sleep. and if i wake up in the morning, well, i will keep taking care of myself by myself all over again.

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,

I all alone beweep my outcast state

And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries

And look upon myself and curse my fate,

Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,

Featured like him, like him with friends possess'd,

Desiring this man's art and that man's scope,

With what I most enjoy contented least;

Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,

Haply I think on thee, and then my state,

Like to the lark at break of day arising

From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate;

For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings

That then I scorn to change my state with kings.

~ Shakespeare, Sonnet 29

providence

He knew my father. My Dragon. He knew my father and the first time he saw me I was sixteen years old riding flat out across the pasture on my horse.

He was back home in Texas from Vietnam and back at university. My father was a rancher, an agricultural auctioneer with a great bid chant, and he had a noon agricultural segment at the local television station. I grew up on 135 acres of prime black soil in central Texas on the flood plane of the Brazos River. My Dragon came back from war and attended Texas A&M where my father was an alumni, attending after his own war, WWII. My father liked to give back to the ag boys by giving them weekend jobs like hauling cattle, unloading and stacking hay in the barn, helping with vaccinations, and working auctions with him running cattle through for the buyers. My Dragon was one of those boys. I never paid attention to them. My father was strict and I was afraid of him so I didn’t hang around like some daughters would if their dad had college guys around. I would finish my chores, saddle up and ride off to get away from his criticism.

Thirty years later when my Dragon and I realized we were from the same area, he told me of the man he’d done work for. He said he’d seen this man’s daughter, and that my hair reminded him of that girl. He’d seen her riding bareback with only a halter on the horse out across the pasture at a dead gallop for a barbed wire fence. He said he held his breath. Then he watched as the horse leaped over the fence. He gasped out loud because he said my father looked up and saw me do it. All my father said was, “I hate it when she does that. That kid’s got a wild side to her and it’s going to be the death of me.” Then they went back to work.

I had another chance to meet my Dragon but we missed each other again. He was a senior in college, still doing things for the Marines, but basically a full-time student. I was a freshman at the college in my hometown 2 hours north. My parents didn’t allow me to go away to college since I was barely 17. I had optioned to test out of my senior year of high school to skip all the drama and get on to college. A girl I’d made friends with had a boyfriend in the Corps at A&M and we went to all the football games. We’d stay in a motel room together that her boyfriend would get for us. He’d hook me up with blind dates and we’d all double to the games, and go to the parties. We always had a great time. The boys in the Corps were always very respectful and fun. I loved going.

My friend’s boyfriend would tell stories of his Battalion CO. He said everyone looked up to the guy as a kind of larger than life version of what they all wanted to be. He said the guy was a veteran of Vietnam with 3 tours under his belt, was fair, a bit of a wild man, and very much a mystery. He carried a full load of classes, but would disappear for a couple of weeks here and there. Once, he said, this guy came back battered and recovering from a gunshot wound, but he was 100% there for all the drills and the more physical training the Corps guys did. I wanted to meet him but I was only 17 and my friend’s boyfriend thought the guy was too old and much too experienced for me. He said the guy had a nickname from his days in Vietnam with a Force Recon fire team. His nickname was Dragon.

And yes, thirty years later my Dragon and I talked about it, and we both agreed that I had been too naïve for him and he was not in the right place in his head for me. After he graduated from A&M, he left the country for several years involved in stuff that “if I told you I’d have to…..,” yeah, that stuff.

I had left college to live and care for my mother full time at the hospital in Dallas while she was dying. Long story of how that came about. After she died, my father told me he wouldn’t support me anymore now that she was gone. I got a job as a fashion illustrator for a department store, and then moved over to an ad agency as a designer.

During this time, he came back to base his home out of Dallas. You have to come home sometime every once in a while and for Dragon, it was Dallas, in a condo, two blocks from my apartment. Yeah, I know. We went to the same grocery store, the same bookstore, and had a lot of friends in common. After my mother died my father paid for the first six months rent for me until my job allowed me to take over my own care and feeding. I was in a little apartment where I had met a lot of people to hang with at the pool. It was the seventies. What can I say? The pool was our version of the coffee shop, Central Perk, in the show “Friends.” Guess who had friends at the apartment complex? Guess who, when he was in town, would be invited to come sit at the pool?

We didn’t meet then and I don’t know if the heavily muscled guy I saw sitting across the pool with some of my guy friends was him or not. But there was this one time when there was this guy with a military haircut, who had muscles that you don’t get in a gym, was sitting across from me and I was dying to meet him. He didn’t swim but only waded because his shoulder was bandaged. I asked one of the guys to introduce me and he said, “No way. He’s way out of your league.” When I persisted my friend said, “No. He’s not your typical guy. That’s not a paper cut. He’s like a soldier or something and isn’t around all the time. You’re too innocent. You’d break each other’s hearts. “

See, that guy was my Dragon. I didn’t understand back then, but I do now. It wasn’t the right time. My Dragon and I talked about it. He said his mind was dealing with what he did. They kept sending him out. He kept coming back. He said to me all those thirty years later that he wondered if he kept surprising them by coming back every time. He said I was exactly what he was wanting but felt then that he couldn’t have. He said he would have broken my heart because he wouldn’t have felt worthy, and by leaving me, it would have broken his.

We did meet one of these times. I wasn’t making enough to get by so I took a second job as a janitor at the city hospital in downtown Dallas. I worked Friday, Saturday, and Sunday nights from 11 PM until 7 AM in and around the Knife and Gun Club. That’s what they called the ER on weekend nights. Oh, God the stories I could tell.

We had this one guy come in with an 8 ball from a pool table stuck in his mouth. He’d done it on a dare but the pain overrode the alcohol and his jaw muscles locked up. His buddy brought him to Parkland, the hospital, because the bar manager had made 8 Ball Man leave his car keys in lieu of getting his 8 ball back. Hysterical. But then there were the bar fights, the train wrecks, the bus accidents, and all the other tragedies that come in. I cleaned, emptied trash, and mopped from the ER to the morgue. I saw lives saved and lives end. I heard people crying and saw people go into shock. I was 21 and my mom had been dead for a year.

Once night there was a bar fight and the cops brought in several people. People were driving themselves over. Cops needed stitches. People needed surgeries. I was mopping and emptying trash like there was no tomorrow and for a couple of them, there wasn’t. It was a wild night and I was tired. My hair was in its usual ponytail. I had covers on my shoes because of all the blood. And there was this guy. I overheard one of the cops say he was a deputy that had been called to help with the riot. His face was had bruises and contusions and his knuckles were bleeding. His arms were big, hard with muscles. He had on a short sleeve, black t-shirt that was torn and covered with blood. It was dripping all over my floor from the knife that was sticking out of his rib under his left arm.

I thought he was handsome. I thought he looked familiar. I was peeking at him when one of the nurses handed me a pack of gauze and said, “Give it to the bleeder and tell him he’s next.” They were that busy.

I walked over and handed him the gauze and told him he was next. I know I was staring. He looked up at me and I really got to see him. I looked him in the eyes. I felt woozy. I am sitting here typing this consumed with memories and I feel woozy again. I cannot tell in words what that eye contact did to me. I was breathless.

One of the nurses saw me peeking at him again and again. She said, “Sweetie, he’s sitting in the ER with a knife in his rib. He’s not exactly what one would bring home to meet Mom.”

I told her my mother was dead. She didn’t bat an eye. “Then I’ll be your mother and tell you, no. Cop or not, he’s seen more of the world than you ever will. Grow up and then look him up.”

Prophetic.

Twenty-three years later I was introduced to a man who became interested in me. I told him I didn’t want a knight in shining armor. I told him I wanted a dragon. That’s when he smiled and asked me out to lunch, “Just as friends. You come from Texas. I do, too. At least we’ll have that in common.”

We had been going out for a month and were sitting in a theater waiting for a movie to start. He leaned into me and asked me if I’d ever worked at Parkland in Dallas. He said I looked like a girl he remembered. I turned in my seat with my mouth open. I asked him, “Knife in the ribs?”

“Yeah.” His eyes were the same. We stared at each other. As the lights dimmed he grabbed my hand. He whispered, “I thought you were cute. I tried to get your phone number but there was a nurse that was a battle ax.”

That started our comparing notes.

I think it was destiny. I think we were meant to be together. I just wish we’d gotten started so much earlier. There were times when we’d talk about our lives and how we ended up together and he’d say, “I wish I’d walked around that pool and claimed you then. Or at the hospital. I should have gone back and found you. We could have had a lifetime. I could have watched you be pregnant with our babies. I would have loved that.”

I would have, too.

Oh, God I miss him. I feel like I’m falling inside myself, like a black hole. I can’t believe it’s been a year. It hurts so bad. I don't know why it's so bad tonight. I just want him back. I feel so hollow without him. He means everything to me. Everything.

Now he's a Dragon in Heaven. I saw this cloud and got off only one photo. My battery died. I was crying. I dashed inside and replaced them but when I got back outside, it was all over the place and the dragon wasn't there anymore. Just like my life. He's not here anymore.

I just hope that cloud was a sign. I need it to be a sign. I want him so much. We were meant to be together. Our whole lives kept leading us together. Providence. Why did they take him away?

i'm disappearing for a while

i think i'll be disappearing for a while. i'm going to duck my head until the wedding is over. i've been sewing and sewing, finished the wedding runner and going to be steam pressing it over the next couple of days. i still have my daughter's going away skirt to finish the hand applique on, and the flowers get delivered to me next Wednesday for me to start making the arrangements.

her father, his wife, and his mother are coming in a week from tomorrow and the demands have already been phoned in to me for how things are going to go. they aren't going to go that way, not the way they want. but i can't confront directly. not these three. i want my daughter's wedding to be peaceful BUT exactly as she wants it. it's HER DAY.

so the chess match has started. they move. i silently counter. it will be interesting. and it will be exhausting.

i'm already tired. i still have a lot of creating to do. as my daughter says, "magic." i don't make magic. i just make things. the runner is pretty. i put hundreds of hours into it in and around all the other things i made for her wedding plus the Memory Quilts i'm working on.

i'm so tired. i've been crying a lot more lately, over simply ridiculous things. my gentle little Scootie Wootums, innocent Scottie extraordinaire leaped almost three feet into the air and snatched a blue and black butterfly out of the air. he didn't eat it but he killed it just the same. and i cried. standing outside on the small hill beside my apartment all alone with my two little dogs, i cried. he didn't know. he was being a little dog. but i cried all the same.

i miss my husband. i miss him. i feel lost and empty. i feel less. i know it goes against the natural order of things but for this one weekend, i want him back. i want him standing with me. i want to be somebody one more time. when he was alive, i was a person. now, i don't know what i am but i know that people do not hesitate to dismiss me, expect the impossible, ignore me, stand me up, tell me i'm creepy, wrong, and have the talent to decimate my feelings. i'm tired and i'm fragile.

i am planning on hiding behind the camera at my daughter's wedding. i'm the official photographer anyway so it's a good excuse. i do not think i will be able to deal with too much more than making sure the swarming vultures do not harm my daughter with either actions or words. she's going to be so happy, so vested in her day that i know she could easily get blind sided. protecting her is all i have the energy for. but who will protect me?

i miss him. three small words that in no way convey the depth of pain behind them. i have an ache inside that feels colder as this wedding approaches. i want to be able to turn and see the love he had for me, the laughter in his eyes when people act silly. i want to know that he has my back.

i don't think i've felt so alone since that first 2 or 3 months. it's coming up on 7 months since he died and i'm not getting any better. i'm existing. i'm working very hard. i laugh sometimes but i don't feel it deeply. i'm not laughing inside. i'm falling into a routine of silence and monotony. i don't look too far into the future, not beyond the next day or so. i worry about food, paying the rent, and weather for walking to the library.

i miss him. i want him back. it's almost been 7 months since he died and i don't see the improvement that the facilitator of the group claims is coming. i'm lonely. for him. i'd like a friend but for some reason people don't take to me. not for long.

he is my friend and i want him back. he means everything to me but he's gone. i still can't believe it sometimes. i still get that punch in the stomach when i fully face the statement, "he died." so i think maybe i should disappear for a while. i think i'm going to duck my head and get my daughter's wedding over with. i'm going to focus on juggling the demands made with the strategy of keeping them from hurting her.

i just really need a dragon for this. i need my Dragon.

i'll be back after the weekend of September 12th.

my daughter and me ~ missing my husband and our cove

our cove. i wish somehow i could have managed to still be there. but i'd be more or less at the end of the world out there.

today my daughter and her fiancee's mother and grandmother picked me up and we went to order the wedding cake. so much talk about everything. i stayed quiet and listened. her fiancee's grandmother wanted to pay for the cake. so nice of her. her contribution is most gratefully appreciated. but both women were telling my daughter what she needed to do, what she should want. they neither one were really listening to her.

i took one of the napkins the lady had given us to taste some choices and i started drawing while listening to what my daughter wanted. i drew the cake she was dreaming of. i silently nudged her the napkin and signed quickly under the table, "this is what i hear you saying. if so, get what you want. it's your wedding. yours."

she smiled and nodded, then took the napkin and placed it on the table and said, "this is what i want. it's understated. it will be less expensive but it's also perfect for me. this is what i want." and that's what was ordered. both of the other women were simply being overly helpful and my daughter needed to just step up a little bit.

after the bakery, my daughter and i were taken to Michael's to get other things for the wedding that i really have no idea what for. they bought nothing. i think today was just an excuse for shopping but it was 5 hours away from my sewing and quilting here. my daughter and i followed in the wake of her fiancee's mom and grandmother. we talked when we were spoken to, otherwise we signed to each other so no one would understand our conversation.

i wasn't doing well today and my daughter, of course, sensed it. she and i are very close, always have been. she learned ASL with me/for me when i started slowly losing my hearing a few years ago. i have horrible tinnitus that goes through my head like a nail sometimes. nothing to do about it. my husband used to do this cool thing with my feet, rubbing them and flexing my ankles to either distract me or help me relax and it always worked. it didn't diminish the tinnitus but it made me feel so much better. i can't do it for myself. it was just something he did for me one day when i couldn't hear him over the din in my ears.

the pressures of this wedding that i'm keeping off her, shielding her from, playing mediator, and shielding her from her dad as much as possible is wearing me out with the depression i feel over this weekend's 6 month milestone of my husband's death quickly being followed by his birthday and our wedding anniversary.

i'm so tired. i feel bad when i'm told that i need to remember how much he loved me. i do remember. i don't want these blogs, my writings of grief to give the impression that i sit here and wallow day after day and think he stopped loving me because he died. i am simply grieving for him. i want something i can't have. i want him and it's not childish behavior or being petulant or sacrilegious to wish he were here with me right now.

i'm tired of the money situation.....the fact that i don't have any. i work my tail off for so little and make it stretch so far. i'm paying for so much of this wedding and making so many things for my daughter simply because i can't afford to buy them. her dad, Lord, her dad just....what do i say? i've had to sit alone on the phone and literally beg. i've had to cut deals and be dictated to, be criticized about my Memory Quilt business, about how little orders i have, should be better at marketing myself, how i'm failing in getting it off the ground faster. every time i have to talk to him about something it's like i've been hobbled and forced to run a gauntlet being beaten by horse crops and coat hangers. don't ask me how i know what that feels like.

but i do it for her. i'd do anything for my children. the job isn't over just because they are grown. they still don't know what to do when they see it coming. they still get afraid. or they get too hurt or angry to strategize properly. it's an acquired skill. i wasn't born knowing how to do this. i learned from a very early age to read calculation and anger and malevolence in people's body language and voices.

i wish my husband were here. all this would go so smoothly. my husband would have figured a way out for him and i to pay for this. he always did come up with the money my children needed. he always answered the phone if "he" called so "he" would know i wasn't vulnerable anymore. my husband would sit beside me when i had to do my thing. then he'd take my hand and we go for a walk down on the beach of our cove.

the wind, the salt air, the gulls, the waves. it soothed me. his hand in mine as we'd walk out across the rocks and look northeast to what i thought of as my island. isla womanNshadows. i'd tell him we just needed to move to the abandoned light keeper's house and live there away from everyone. he'd tell me everything was going to be alright. he'd tell me we were in this together, that no matter what hell life brought us, it brought it to us. us. our lives may be hell but our marriage was a blessing. it was everything i'd ever wanted my life entered into that sacrament to be. i love him so much. he inspired awe in me. and he loved me for exactly who i was. it amazed me that he found anything of value in me. but he did and i now know that one person loved me. i have that on my resume.

my children love me because i am their mom, because they know what i've sacrificed for them, and that i would give up my life for them. they love me because i'm cool to know. but they have their own lives also. i gave them that. self-sufficiency and freedom. they just need me for this one last thing. protection.

it's still my husband and me. it's still us but he's the silent partner now. now it's me that has had to get back up in the line of fire for guard duty. and God forgive me but i am so tired. i miss him more on days when i've had to beg and think so fast on my feet. i sit at home and look at my husband's picture, that smiling face of his and i want him back so much. i'd handle it every day all day long....i'd endure anything if i could just fall into bed with him and fall asleep beside him. if i could just feel his fingers combing my hair as i closed my eyes. have his deep voice in my ear telling me everything is going to be alright.

the tinnitus is pretty bad tonight and i didn't get to go to the cove after dealing with "him." i'm no where near the ocean anymore. i just have to endure this. it's the gift that is my life.

i love you, husband. one minute more. i'm going to hang on one minute more. i learned how to do that when i was a very little girl. i endured childhood. then i endured the first marriage. then i was blessed with you and hanging on one minute more was easier with you beside me. i love you. i'll love you forever. i'm still hanging on.

terrible, awful, horrible, really bad day

i woke up feeling out of sync. at first i wasn't sure where i was. i didn't hear the ocean. no gulls were annoyingly loud. and i was very much aware that i was alone.

he's dead. it hit me like what i would think a sock of quarters in the chest would feel like. the pain was sharp and then the ache settled in.

i got up and instantly started crying. walked the dogs, ate a bowl of cereal, then started in to work. i quilted for a while, then took a break and moved to piecing another quilt, took another break and embroidered for a while on my daughter's stuff for her wedding. back to the quilting. and through it all i would suddenly be overwhelmed with deep sobs.

and now it's night and that feeling is still here. he's dead and he's not coming back. it's not the alone thing. i can do that. it's the being without him that's whittling away at my will. i'm not strong. i never was strong like the in your face, confrontational strong. i work the mind.

i grew up with a mother who wasn't thrilled i was her daughter. long story. my ex wasn't someone i could confront. i had to play chess. i had to manipulate based on the mood he was in. so i'm strong when i have someone to work with. counter his moves. save my children. get myself set up as the target and then work with that.

but all i'm facing is grief. i'm alone with it day in and day out. my beautiful girl, my wonderful daughter. i did call her today crying, telling her i didn't save him. i worked on him but i couldn't save him. i was so afraid i'd done it wrong. there was a pulse when the EMT's loaded him in the back of their bus but hospital had him all of 10 minutes before they gave up. he was gone.

bless her heart. she told me that i'd done all i could, that the professionals had done all they could but it was not meant to be. she told me that our Marine wouldn't want to know that i was beating myself up this way. and she's write. he'd always wanted me to fly.

i was so beaten down by my life from before. all he'd wanted was for me to smile, laugh, talk out loud. i could go a whole day with minimal conversation. i learned not to be a chatty woman in front of men. but he loved me, worked with me, teased me, charmed me. he made it okay to come out of my shell and be myself. the more i relaxed, the more he smiled. he loved me so much. and i love him.

he used to say to me that every day we woke up, i was freer than the day before. he knew i had it in me to fly. he would walk with me on the beach, we'd climb rocks, walk Dogtown in Gloucester, or the Dog Bar out in the harbor. i'd take photographs, so many photos. he'd be in a lot of them, and he'd smile. he knew how handsome i thought he was. he loved it that i would sneak photos of him. that i would attempt to be sneaky meant i had confidence in myself. he would get cocky and say it was because of him. and it was. it was all because of his love and approval.

he wanted so much for me to fly.

i'm not strong anymore. and i don't feel like flying. i don't think i can. he's gone and he was the only one i would have flown for. he would have showed me how. he would have been up there with me.

i had to tell someone about this day. just had to put it out there. i had a really bad day. i miss him as much today as i did that moment when i was escorted into the room in the ER where they had laid him for me to go see. the pain is that intense. the heartbreak is that severe.

i miss him so much. God, i miss him so much. please take care of him. let him be alright. please let him know how much i adore him, how present he is in my heart. but don't let him know how destroyed i am that he's with you and not with me. and don't take it personally. it's just that he meant everything to me. everything.