Today

Today is my birthday.  It’s a bittersweet day as I lost a very close friend on this very day two years ago.  This was about a year and a half after I lost  my boyfriend whom i dearly loved.  I have lost too many men in my life and the memories keep flooding my mind today. For some reason the age of 44 is hitting me hard.  I don’t know why it’s just seems old.  Must be something from that timeline I set in my head when I was 15.   I  will be back to my chipper self tomorrow and it’s been a long day so I am headed to bed.

A rollercoster of emotions......

Having one of those weekends.
 My temp job ended on Friday night. It ended over a month early.  I knew in my mind the end was coming for the temp job but when it actually happened I am surprised on my response. I didn't even react this emotionally in June when I got laid off from my real job. Part of it was probably a delayed response to that one. I still have friends who are still temping in the job  and all I could was think of  what I did wrong... but in my heart I know it was done for business reasons and low call volume.  Sat I just felt empty. I remember laying on my bed and just staring at my dresser just not thinking of anything. Life seemed so empty. I just laid there and then vegged all evening. As I said before I felt lost and this just hit me hard. I couldn't sleep very well last night either. I kept waking up. Today I though I was better but today it came out as sadness.

I talked to my mom about my situation and she gave me some advice. This advice made me think.. what do I want? I still don't know.. I don't even know if I want to go after what we talked about because that might be settling and I want to choose what I do for a job this time (or choose the best I can). It was good advice but I can't decide if it's good for me.

I came into my room and I just started to cry. I called my boyfriend and he just listened. We eventually were able to just talk and I was laughing..a good thing.. and then I found myself crying again. During it.. I came to realize it was just a reaction in releasing emotions. I needed to let the emptiness pour out. When I got done talking with him I felt lighter. For all the doubts when we are apart .. the frustrations that happen on my end to the status of it. ... his concern and scared to hurt the kids on his end.... he can heal me. He supports and cares. I love that about him. I should tell him that more often. Just hearing his voice can soothe that. I never knew that about boyfriends until the last two. They have been awesome men who have given me so much. Real relationships. Real partnerships. I am been very privileged to have both men care about me so much.

The story....

Hi,
I stumbled on a blog on where a woman lost her husband. She was contacted by the hospital at 1:30 in the afternoon after he collapsed at the Gym at 8:30. It hit a cord and I left her a comment on how I so related to her. Grieving is an interesting thing. I had to put it on hold last year while I handled a family reunion.

Then life quieted down in Aug and I feel apart watching the movie “The Bucket List”. I don’t know why but I grieved more that night then I had the previous two months. The following week was really hard and I made some decisions that helped me. I had many friends tell my I should watch the movie “PS… I Love You” as i could probably identify with it. In it the characters husband dies. I didn’t like it at all. One it was nothing like my experience and they fought all the time.

Today I found the blog. I am crying again. Why I don’t know. It’s been a day I have slept all day. The bed has been so comfy. I will probably be up all night working on the homework but even now my head is so heavy I want to go to bed again.

Here is the post I wrote to the women:
Last June i lost my boyfriend in almost the same way. He had a headache for two weeks. We thought it was a sinus headache that wouldn't go away as we had been sick a lot that spring. In looking back i know see what it really was. We talked like usual on our way to work. I said good bye when i got to the parking lot of my work. He was picking up breakfast at McDonald's and we had just laughed about his lack of money.
At 9:30 i checked my phone and had a text message that he went to the doctors at 8:30. I tried calling him thinking it would be over. He didn't answer. I tried his home, his phone and work over the next few hours. I never could get a hold of him. I even wrote one of his coworkers and i never heard back. I went to lunch at 12:30 with a friend. When I got back I had a voice-mail on my work phone. It started out as a woman saying she was a friend of my boyfriend and could I call her. I knew then he was gone. I was in shock. I called her back and she confirmed it. He had collapsed at the Drs office. The tried for 20 minutes to relieve him but it didn’t help. The office didn’t know who to contact and he ended up at the medical examiners office. The Doctor's office had to call his company in Seattle who then called his coworkers in Portland. Since he was not married the ME was required to notify his mother. I was lucky his friend in the Seattle office called me directly other wise I don’t know who I would have found out.

He and I had lonely been dating 7 months but we knew we were soul mates and we were going to be married.
I loved him very much and I was included in the plans of his funeral but I made no decisions. The service they held was defiantly more for them then for the celebration of his life. They were not religious. I am catholic and it brought sorrow to my heart that they had to really grasp to find a religious figure to talk about him. In fact I don’t think my boyfriend knew him at all and the gentleman that spoke did not know my boyfriend.

That is what I wrote. I ended it with I will pray for you.
A little bit more that I want to write out but didn’t feel was needed on the comment.

In the end his mother and sister did not want my help after the first day and I didn’t even help clean out his apartment. In some ways I am glad for that and in other ways I am hurt by it. It’s hard being the girlfriend and not the wife. But I knew in my heart what happened didn’t matter that the time with Jim was what was special. He has now been gone longer then I knew him but the hurt is still there. I knew and continue to know that he was a very special man and that I was very privileged to be loved by him. I will always love him and he will always be part of my heart. He changed me for the better and I am reminded of that with a smile many times a week.

I will love again, and I think I have found someone that I will marry but Jim will always be special. I am so glad my new man understands that relationship. I love you Jim.
Dottie

Following the blue car!

I was driving to work today and I got behind a blue car. You know how that happens. You are curious and you look to see who is driving. When I looked this morning, I caught my breath. It was Jim. Now I know that it’s not feasible, he has passed away but it brought back so many memories of following him. I wasn’t feeling well either this morning and the nostalgia just poured over me. It looked just like him. Tears welled up in my eyes. I kept thinking… maybe it was all a joke and he was really living somewhere in the city but I know that’s not true as I said good bye to him at the Funeral Home. For those of you that don’t know. Jim was my soul mate and he died last June. It was devastating. We had plans to get married. I stayed at his house almost every weekend and we talked every morning on our way to work. I was so comfortable with him. He was home. I knew instantly, after getting over the fact he reminded me of my old boss – who was a lady. We had plenty of laughs over that on our first weekend. At one time when I would write about him, tears would stream down my face. I am doing better as now I just miss him. He has been gone longer than I knew him but he has forever changed me.

Do you believe in soul mates? Jim and I actually had a conversation about it before he died. He believed that he only had one and I believe that you can have many but that doesn’t mean you are destined to be with all of them. The irony of our conversation, I repeat over and over in my head. Maybe I knew that I would have to find someone else. Maybe he knew he wasn’t long on this earth. He helped me grow up. I was my base that I could come home to and then go out in the world and do what I needed to do. He calmed me. Love like that is fleeting.

I have met someone new. When we first met I kept saying that it’s wonderful but it’s just different. I didn’t know how to explain and it took a while to readjust my outlook. I think my new guy understands. He is so wonderful about my grieving over Jim. It doesn’t come as often but I still hits me every once in a while. My new man has children. When I met Jim I had accepted that children would probably not be part of my future. If they appeared they would have been accepted with open arms but Jim and I had a plan that was just the two of us. Now there might be a chance that kids will be part of my life. It was such a drastic change of thinking of how my life was going to turn out. Like I said before, my new relationship is wonderful and I am very happy it’s just a different kind of love. Not better, not worse, just different.

Back to work.. Adios!