Lives

This post is longer overdue than any I've posted after months of time (but that could be me just doing life math wrong.) I have slacked so tremendously in writing my life story that it's almost too late to recover from such a span of activity: as if now nothing remains but to jot out the Cliff Notes version, the abridged brevity of my memories over the last months since I've posted.

I suppose I could recap events as such: I spent my birthday in New York with G, wherein he stocked his refrigerator of every size and shape of Diet Coke as he could find, as a surprise, even buying me a Diet Coke costume, Diet Coke artwork and a random Diet Coke pen. He's insanely clever that way. Then I returned to Florida (after a great but of course rocky week together) and life resumed...and there were visits I don't exactly recall, although old emails could lead my memory down right paths, and oh, wait...it was during my trip to New York to turn 37 that I also interviewed (a second time, after the time I did so in Los Angeles yielding no return but with hope for possible future employment) with Shawmut D & C, which led to events that have proven absolutely life-altering. In other words: I was handed a job offer. And I quit Hunt. After 13 years of service. And gave away many of my belongings. Scheduled an Amtrak one-way from Lakeland, Florida to Penn Station, New York City. And landed at Penn 30+ hours later, taxied to G's in Brooklyn Heights, and essentially "moved in" with him, albeit, as we discussed, a temporary arrangement.

We loved each other (probably still do, at least...from my side of the coin) harder than two people should be capable of loving. And I say that because loving that hard hurts like a gunshot that doesn't quite kill but wounds terribly: paralyzing. But it wasn't working. We were living in his one-BR, one-den, smallish living space with kitchen along one wall apartment, plus with Emma and Minnow (Minnow was a December-the-year-prior arrival, one of the cutest and wildest creatures [feline] I've ever had the pleasure to meet) and most of my remaining items were somewhere in storage in Florida, still. I felt like I was living a quarter of a life, from bags, even though he made room for me, sweetly, on his "wardrobe" in his bedroom and on shelves in his bathroom and he even went and bought and built a nightstand for me to place some of my things, next to the bed, near the window on the side of the bed that was mine.

It just wasn't working. We would fight. He made numerous attempts at planning activities for us that he couldn't quite see through in terms of the planning stages. I drank way too much wine. We argued like we had been living under the same ceiling for a hundred years, not mere weeks.

And so it surfaced (without me recapping every single bit of it, which someday will come to light, to ensure my own historical accuracy) that we would break up and I would move out.

It's all such a blur to me. I remember seeing him standing at his kitchen sink in a charcoal t-shirt and faded jeans clutching a tissue staring at the wall, and how the cats were utterly confused by the level of emotion in the room. I had said to him possibly a day before or days before that I had honestly, honestly pictured us together, forever. And after he stood at his kitchen sink watching that unmoving wall, he turned and came to me, where I stood in his bedroom threshold, and hugged me and said, Remember what you said about being together forever? He went on, I felt that way about you, and I've never felt that way about anyone before.

At one point, he asked, How do you feel? And I could barely cry out through tears, Devastated.

I begged to leave a couple of boxes there until I could find a home. He sadly but graciously agreed to that. In the meantime, an old friend of mine had contacted me that he was quitting his company (the company we both worked for and how we met) and was moving to New York and Did I Need a Roommate?

Timing-wise, this all unfolded fairly successfully. There were glitches. But we got through them. And we moved into an unimaginably amazing apartment on Keap Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, me, my friend and his two Grey Hounds, who have adopted me as their den mother since.

My new job is an entirely different addition to this story.

My life steps are entirely different additions to this story. I have plenty more to add, as insinuated here.

But in a nutshell: I'm working on an amazing hotel restoration project in Midtown Manhattan. My commute from Williamsburg is about 30 minutes, door to door. I signed up for two writing classes, both which have sucked (ugh, life lessons) and am now signed up to start a French refresher course here in Williamsburg this coming Monday, which I hope will redeem the idea of signing up for coursework in New York.

I love and I hate life. Both. At equal capacity. I miss G so much that my heart burns. There are days and days and days that I want that Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind movie to be my reality. Erase it all. Begin again. But there are also many days that I remind myself that meeting someone and finding an exact near match at first sight, at first sentence, at first exchange of glances...is so rare. But it happened with us. And now I just have to realize that the rarity of that lends to eventual reality and which...well, reality kind of sucks compared to what I experienced with him in the early stages.

But life carries on.