Full circle.

The final anniversary of the hard days has come and gone. I knew the final one was this month sometime, knew it was close to now. It was August 25th, I just went back at my blog and looked. I didn't read it, don't want to think about that day, but it has been a full year. Come full circle. A year since last he called me baby, since last he showed an ounce of compassion, if only for just a second. A year since I saw something in his eye that was there, no matter how much he denied it at the time and would deny it now.

Full circle. None of it matters anymore. I'm just glad to say I've made it through the first year of firsts. The first holidays alone, first birthdays. First anniversary of the bullshit day, first anniversary of black Thursday. They say that when someone dies, the first year of dealing with the dates is the hardest. It's all past now.

But yet, I must say this. I've made it. I didn't go crazy and loose my job, my home. I did it without a prescription crutch. A majority of the people in this company can't make it through their daily lives, much less the hard times without some kind of "happy" pill. Reminds me of the song... "A time to weep, a time to mourn." Life has seasons and this has been one of mine. Sometimes, we are meant to be unhappy. In my darkest hours I'd just have about killed to make the pain stop, but I didn't resort to drugs to do it. When my doctor suggested anti-depressants, I told her not yet. I'd like to wait. Wait to see if I can pull through without a little helper. I haven't completely, not sure I ever will but what I feel is real, not some chemically induced shadow of my emotions. Looking back, I'm amazed that I didn't cave and beg for anything that would make it better. But I'm glad I didn't. I believe in strength from within. I believe in strength from friends and family and the love and support they offer, sure. But I believe, I truly believe that we make our own happiness, not a pill. I want to be real, I want to be strong when I can, weak when I have to be but alive at the end.

I want that magic bullet that makes everything alright. I want that magic person to be in my life to give me love who I can love. Want and have to have for survival are two different things. My own two feet is where I hope to always stand. When I need to lean, I'll lean but I'll not lean so much that they keep me upright.

I think about Rowan... what will I tell her? What story will I tell her about her name and where it came from? She'll never know my previous life. Never know him and may never know much about him. She'll know Z, but even then she will be far removed from the man I loved. Perhaps when she gets older, finds a wooden box and looks inside. Opens picture albums and says "Mommy, who is this?" What will I tell her? I don't want her to see my sorrow, to know the hell I suffered. To know what I lost and gave up. I don't want her to know (until she is much older and reads these words, much much older) that deep down I believe I lost the most important person I'd ever had in my life until her, don't want her to know that the reason I think I lost him was so I could find her. I don't want her to know this sorrow. I don't want her to know the mom that could have laid down and died at many times in the last 16 months if only my soul would stop screaming. I don't want her to ever see the pain and I sure as hell don't want her to ever feel this. But I can't protect her from everything.

I intended to let the final anniversary pass without comment. I haven't been thinking about it much lately, even though in the back of my mind I knew it was nearing. Scanning the news tonight, I saw an article that brought back a memory to me that made me smile. Made me smile, made me miss and made me mourn. Drove home to me that while it is gone, it won't be forgotten by either. No matter how far back in the mind that love is pushed, no matter the harsh words or unkindness and untruths are slung. I'll always know.

I've been a For Better or For Worse fan for years, almost a decade. Tams got me into it when we lived together as she had books laying around that I picked up while on the toilet. Eventually, I collected all of the collections. For almost a decade, I read the daily strip online. If I didn't do it each day, I'd catch up at least once a week.

I haven't looked at the strip in months. When I did and got caught up, it had been months. I found that it just hurt. It was just another reminder of what is gone.

The main characters in the strip, John and Elly Patterson were a couple much like E and I with one exception... they had 2 children. We just had Z. From time to time, I'd email E a strip when it was funny, touching, or was just so much like us.

This Sunday will be the last FBorFW strip. Lynn Johnson, the creator of the strip is giving it up. I was saddened to learn that after 32 years of marriage, she and her real life husband, the man behind the inspiration for John Patterson, well... they ended too. Funny how things you think should and would and will last forever sometimes don't.

I saw someone I once worked with several months ago. He came to the house a few times. He and E got along well because they were both Mac geeks. We bought his Ipod shuffle from him and he gave us an IMAC. The same Imac that is sitting in the bottom of my wardrobe, needing a home. The one that sat in our computer room for ages. The one I watched the Katrina footage on. The one I would sit and E would IM me from across the room, just a few feet away. We'd laugh and giggle and talk shit to each other with Z in the room with us. Things would couldn't say outloud in front of the kid. And the love yous, you look pretty sitting there, find you, kill you and all manner of everyday things we said to each other all the time.

I saw this person. He asked how E was. I told him we divorced. The look on his face of shock, he couldn't believe it. He about summed it up when he said "I thought you were forever. If you guys didn't make it, it kinda ruins my hope that there is a such thing as true love in the world." I couldn't have agreed more.

That drove something home to me... E and I were so good together. Everyone knew it, everyone saw it. Everyone was so amazed and shocked when it ended. Not just him, not just me, but our friends. I fear that now, he has clouded that memory. He has told himself all the things that make it not so. But I know better. We had so much more in common that just Pink Floyd and we had love. So much love.

I haven't cried in weeks. Weeks. Not over that previous life. I fight back the demons when they come into my thoughts, fight back the pain and the memories. I speak of the good sometimes with Z, tell stories like always that were parts of our lives. Like the first time Z walked (which I was not there for but I've heard E tell the story so many times I can tell it exactly like him). So many stories. Sitting round the fire at the party after most had gone home. Just Tams, Z and his friend Davey, Rog and Anne and Tim and I.... telling stories. It was so nice telling those stories, being there with Rog and Z. Oh, how it was wonderful. But at one point I looked at everyone round the fire and realized there was something missing, something huge missing. Here Z is, finally the person we looked forward to knowing. On the edge of childhood but living in an adult world. Able to talk about adult things, able to share stories and laugh and be part of the group, not just the pesky kid that wishes the grown ups would stop talking. He was very much a part of the conversation. He is a young man with all manner of possibilities before him on a Saturday night, yet here he was all day, all night just leaving after midnight. At one point, Tams looked at me while Z was talking and said "Where did he learn all that? How did he get so smart?" I told her he was actually one of the most intelligent youngens I know then said "If only he'd use his powers for good."

I felt his absence then. The same as the day at the park when Z was posing for prom pictures. As I've felt it so many times this past 16 months. He would have loved that, loved the mental gymnastics that was taking place around the fire. Hell, he would have loved the redneck gymnastics that was the slip and slide, even if he had only watched.

I have teared up and started to cry and fought it back once over the last few weeks. I felt it when I saw R & A pull up. I felt the lump in my throat coming. Felt the rush of happiness at seeing them, at knowing they are still my friends, even if on a part time basis. When I hugged R, I missed him so much then. Here was someone who shared our brain. The two of them always shared one and then when I came along, I got in on the brain action too. Here was the closest link to E I've ever known, the one person who reminds me of him more than another soul on the planet. I wanted to see them, wanted them here. I got over the lump in my throat and my pounding heart in just a matter of minutes. Once that past, it was "same as it ever was" just like it is with the gang, with Tams, with Z. I didn't look at him all night and see E like I feared I would, just my friend.

The hard moment was walking into the house with them.... So much has changed yet the core, the center has stayed the same. The sliding glass doors are gone. The porch is screened in. All carpet is gone. Walking in to the computer room, starting to tell R & A what I had changed. I just said "I changed this room first because it reminded me the most of him." I had to choke it back, suck it in. Tried so hard not to let anyone see me cry. It didn't help that just minutes later, Matt approached me with video camera in hand to ask me what I wanted to say to Rowan. I was already feeling emotional so when I read him the story that I recently found that reminds me so much of her, I had a hard time reading. Especially one page. There is one page in the book that says "Someday you will hear something so sad that you will fold up with sorrow." When I read that part aloud, I had to stop and try to compose myself. I've heard so many things, said so many things, done so many things that fill me with such sorrow that knowing that one day, Rowan will have these feelings too broke my heart.

But on to my original thought...

For Better or For Worse is ending. Sunday, the last strip will run. Monday, she will go back to the beginning and start all over again with the first strips, so hopefully, I'll have the next 29 years to watch Michael and Elizabeth Patterson grow up with Rowan.

Reading that story made me think of one that I sent him once. I went and found it tonight, looked through 2 years of Sundays on the FBorFW website until I found it. I have it in the dining room, folded up and put away inside of a wooden box of memories. But I know it is buried below pictures, post it notes. Grocery lists with subliminal messages slipped in, with I love yous and sexual suggestions between the milk and the shampoo. Knew I'd find a post it note that said "Plastic glasses to go Glass not so." I know what lives in that box, know that the strip from June 27, 2004 is there between the letters. So many letters. I could have easily walked into the other room, opened that box and dug but I didn't want to see everything I knew would be waiting for me there when it is just this one memory I wanted to retrieve. So I searched through the Sundays until I found it.




He always had such a hard time sleeping without me. In his previous life before we were together, he and the WIL rarely slept together those last few years and he hated it. Missed her so much, hated what it said about the decline of their marriage and longed to have her beside him. When we got together, we spent few nights apart right from the beginning. Unlike him, I craved alone time. I missed him so much when I would go on my trips to Chicago. The one weekend he went somewhere without me (to a race of all things) I ached for him, but at the same time I stretched out and enjoyed the empty bed. He always gave me hell because as soon as he got up in the mornings, I was in his spot, practically pushing him out of bed. NOT because I wanted him to go, but because I wanted to be in the warm spot he left behind. AND because even after all those years, I still feel that he was on my side of the bed. I always slept so good when he got out of bed. No snoring, no sweet sucking he made in his sleep that always amused me so. But I missed him too and couldn't wait for him to return.

For years, he wanted me to go to bed at the same time he did. Even if I was just awake reading beside him, he wanted me here.

There were so many nights that I would wake up and need a change of venue to sleep. I'd be hot, or he would be snoring, or I just wanted a new spot. Our old white couch that Tams gave us had the perfect impression of my ass in it. So on those nights, when I would quietly slip from our bed to go find an alone space, normally no sooner had I got back to sleep that he would be standing over me, asking me to come back to bed. He couldn't sleep without me.

When I think of those weeks when he was here, alone in this house, heartbroken and alone it breaks my soul, especially knowing it didn't have to be that way. I am so sorry I caused him that pain. I'm so angry, so bitter than he just let me go and replaced me 3 weeks later, but I still think sometimes of how he must have felt those weeks. I know how he felt. I know but with me, it lasted much longer than 3 weeks.

There were times when I wanted to be alone and that I just couldn't sleep with him, mostly because of the snoring. What I found so hard to do then, I later found that the hardest part wasn't sleeping with him but it was waking up without him. Morning always wins.

When I sent that comic strip to him, he printed it off. For a long time, it hung on the inside doors of the old computer desk we had. When it was finally dismantled and taken away, it hung in my shed the remaining years. It hung there until last summer when I went into my shed to work and actually looked around. Saw the Issues of Dawnia Times on the Wall. Saw the "Happy Valentine's Day... I love you" note hanging above the electric tea pot he got me for V Day one year. Saw the Gene Simmons doll that I got one year on the big yard sale, just as he told my best friend I would. They were walking along together and he saw it, said to her "If Dawnia sees that she'll buy it." Sure enough, I came bounding up to them minutes later, my latest find in my hand, proud of my doll with them laughing and rolling their eyes at me. I don't understand how someone who knew me so well didn't take me seriously when I told him something was wrong. I'll never understand how someone who know me so well didn't see what his detachment was doing to me. I'll never understand how someone who knew me so well couldn't have done the one thing to make me stay.

This strip was so us. It touched us both so much.

I get so excited about my future. Rowan Rowan Rowan. She consumes my every dream, my every hope, my every wish and my every waking thought. The desire to see her, to be near her, to nurture and shape her into a good, strong woman. I believe, I truly believe she is the reason I suffer(ed) all that. I get so excited about my future. If someone said to me... you can go back in time. You can take it all back but... you won't ever get pregnant. You'll never have Rowan. You'll never hear anyone call you mom. I'd bite my lip and do what I did. At least I think I would, I hope I would. But when I gave R that final hug when they were leaving the other night and said the words to him "I'd take years from my life to take it all back" I meant it. I didn't explain but I'm certain he knew what I meant.

None of it matters anymore. It has all come full circle. The time has past, the last kindness I'll ever see was seen a year ago. In just the blink of an eye, it was gone. Years, gone.

None of it matters anymore... but that comic strip, the love behind it. The shared need for each other. Despite what came next, despite the replacements,despite the distractions, despite new loves and new happiness, that mattered and always, always will.