Hugs from Across the Street

Across the street from where Dale grew up were some very special neighbors.  They had children close to Dale and his sister's age and the two families were very close.  These were neighbors that drove 4 hours out to attend our wedding.  Whenever we came to visit, we (even me) were always greeted with warm hellos and hugs.  They knew what was going on in our lives and always seemed genuinely interested in knowing more and they just genuinely cared. 

When Dale died, these neighbors were out of the country and couldn't make it back in time for the funeral.  What they did instead was open up the doors of their home for the people who were traveling from far away, including myself.  I stayed there with my son and my best friend who stayed with me for support.   When Dale's friends from NYC came the night before, they all stayed there too.  And it was incredible.  It was simply wonderful to not be alone and to be with the people that were closest to Dale at that time.  We cried, we told stories, we laughed, and we cried some more.  I cannot begin to express how grateful I was for these neighbors generosity in opening their home to all of us.  Those moments shared are truly treasured.  

For Dale, he partially grew up in that home being so close to them.  They had a swimming pool where Dale learned to swim and where we eventually took our son to swim for the very first time.  It was the place where Dale looked forward to teaching our son how to swim.  The home itself is gorgeous... a Victorian beauty.  It was a home that we had discussed buying one day should these neighbors ever actually sell as they had begun to hint years ago. 

Today I took my son to visit his grandparents and I was able to cross the street for one last big, warm hug from the neighbors.  They just sold their house and were in the last hours of moving out the rest of their belongings as the new owners were taking ownership, today! 

I actually started to cry and had to hold back when I was hugging this neighbor, this woman I barely know.  She is a connection to Dale and she was always someone that I looked forward to seeing when I visited his hometown.  She always welcomed me with that big, warm hug and it made that difficult visit less difficult.  I am truly going to miss her (and her husband) not being there. 

I also couldn't help but to think about how Dale and I had discussed living in that house.  I remember the first time he took me through a walk-through of it to see if I liked it.  We talked about the pros and cons of living across the street from his parents.  Four years ago, it seemed like a possibility.  And today...

Today, when we were still embraced in that hug, this neighbor told me to keep those pictures of my son coming on Facebook.  She told me how much she has enjoyed watching him grow through the pictures that I post.  She also told me to keep her updated on any changes in my life.  She told me that's its time and that I deserve it.  That's when I really started to lose it.  I don't need permission to move on in my life, but I do think I wanted to hear it from someone from his side.  

Emotions have been running high lately... And I appreciated (and will miss) that hug from across the street so very much. 

Everything I Need and Want

Last January I posted "Needs vs. Wants,"  my brainstorm of what I felt was most important to me to find in a partner to help create the kind of relationship that I need and want.  When I look at the list from over a year ago, I feel like I was pretty on as there is nothing that I feel that I need to add or delete.  That's pretty impressive as I've had a year of experiences and growth since that time that apparently have not effected my gut instinct (yay!). 

So when I look back at this list and think about my New Yorker, I feel so incredibly lucky to have met him and to have him in my life.  There is nothing that he isn't... there is nothing that I am compromising with him, not even the wants. 

It's almost as if I was describing my New Yorker... before I ever even met him. 

I Just Know

"I just KNOW."

That's the text I got the other day from my New Yorker.  And just like all the biggies that we've discussed, this too was one that was not surprising.  I already knew.  I already knew from both his end and mine.  We talked about this later that night on the phone and he went further into explaining things.  My explanation was to say that before I even fell in love with him, I just knew too.  I knew something was different.  Something was special.  And the nerves that I had in the first couple of dates were quickly replaced with a sense of calm and comfort ability because without being able to completely explain it or understand it, I could feel it and more than just that, I could trust it.

I didn't know after the first date.  All I knew after the first date was that I wanted to go out with him again for having left with me a feeling that I hadn't felt with anyone else that I had met, appreciation.  (See A Change in Plans)  And as I just reread that myself, it makes me happy to read the words that I wrote about him before I even knew him.  He does lay it all out there... he communicates well, he's not a game player... he's honest, and I used the word trust back then and I can still use it today.  :)

There was never a moment where it just hit me.  That unsure, yet exciting feeling when you hit that certain milestone in a relationship was something I never really felt with him.  There's excitement in different ways... but as for being unsure or uncertain... that is something that I never felt with him.  Like I wrote above, it's peaceful and comforting.  And like I just wrote... our excitement comes in different ways.  Enjoyable things that we do together and have made plans on doing together.  That's how it should be.  There's no living in limbo with him.  I know exactly where he stands and how he feels.  I give him all the credit in that because he has been nothing but completely honest and genuine and he is able to easily communicate with me all of his thoughts.  There's no need to doubt or guess and that leaves room for the trust to build.  And that's how I know. 

WE just know. 

:)

Oh No He Didn't

Yes, I know its been a long time since my last post... I've been busy!  So, I decided to that this would make for a good "been slacking (with good things) with my writing post."  

I got a text.  Not just any text, thee text.  A text from Jesse!  It actually happened about 3 weeks ago.  It was a Friday around 4:00.  I was getting ready to go out with my New Yorker to meet his friends for the very first time.  When I saw it.  I had to do a double, no.. a triple take.  When I saw whom the text was from.  I hesitated before reading it because I had NO idea what it was going to say and... I wasn't sure what I wanted it to say.

What is said was this, "Hey, what are you doing tonight?"

?!?!?!?!?!?!?.. @#!$!%$#@@#$!!!!.... What????!!!.... @#$%@!?

After all this time, that's the text I got?  Then I wondered if it was a mistake text.  Well, of course a group text went out to my friends to spread the news and ask their opinion.  

At first I wasn't going to reply because 1.  what a lame text and 2.  I didn't want Jesse anymore (yay! :))  But, then the person who had been hurt by him came our and the best response that I could think of that could sting and would not open any doors was, "Who is this?"  About 4 hours later, I got a response.  It was an apology for texting the wrong person.  

Was it a mistake?  That's a possibility.  I've done it before, but only with people that I have texted recently.  He would have had to look someone up with a name close to mine in his address book and then click on me instead of the "right" person.  But maybe it wasn't a mistake.  And if it wasn't, what a poor excuse for a man who could never (never) just man up.  

I had to admit that this text effected me a bit, how could it not?  I had wanted to hear from him for SO long.  The person that I am now, the person who knows that Jesse is not the man for me, the person who believes she has found her amazing in another man, brushed it off.  A bit happy to have finally have heard from him and more happy to have slammed the door in his face.  That same person felt a bit sad for the old me of this past year who had wanted nothing more than to hear from him.  It's funny though how things work out the way that they should.  There were better things in store for me and it didn't take me long to realize how much better, how much happier, how amazing, and how lucky I was to have met my New Yorker. 

But Jesse... Oh no he didn't!  LOL

Nothing Ever Becomes Real

...until it is experienced. - John Keats

 

 I didn't take a video of any part of this performance.  I didn't wait in line to meet him after the show.  Instead, I savored and enjoyed being surrounded by this moving performance and let it be as it was... just a moment.  It would have been neat to shake his hand, the very hand that creates this music that I hold so dear.  Instead, I walked out, holding the hand of someone that I hold so dear.  And that was all the better.  

The performance tonight did not play any of the music that I had become so attached to.  It would have been simply amazing for that to have been.  However, that did not take away from the actual experience of being part of a live audience, his audience.  It was still amazing because like the quote above... it becomes real.  

Just like it was far more amazing to travel to Portland and to find, touch, and photograph the very tree that I had spent thousands on to hang on my wall.  Just as it was amazing to find the waterfalls... to smell the air, to feel the mist.  Not only does it become real, it becomes your own.  

My New Yorker is very real to me.  What we have is very real.  But in many ways it is real in our own little world.  This little world does include my son.  However, that world needs to expand.  I have met a handful of his friends.  All for a rather short time, but it all went well and it was great.  On Friday, he will be meeting a bunch of my friends.  On Saturday though... my son and I will be meeting his sister and her family.  Soon it will be his parents.  And in May, he will travel with me to meet my family.  

The idea of having our own little world sounds romantic and intimate.  But I don't want that.  I want our world to be our ability to fuse together our individual worlds.  I want the people who were significant to us before we met to maintain their significance.  I want to meet these people and I want to step into his world just as I want him to step into mine.  I want to expose what we have and to share it with our family and friends so they can experience us, as us.  And it will become just as real to them as it is to us (and hopefully I can step out of the dreamlike surreality that I have actually found and met my amazing!)

Holding On and Letting Go

Two years ago, almost to the very day, I shared with you "Arrivals N2" in my post titled "Bliss."  I had just recently discovered Dustin O'Halloran after watching the movie "Like Crazy" and I was captivated.  For well over a year, I listened to that soundtrack atleast once a day.  It helped to fill the silence and the emptiness that I was coping with and adjusting to, and more than that, it helped me to  feel once again.  I found Mr. O'Halloran's music to inspire hope within me and with that hope came other feelings such as peace and happiness. Because of that, I cannot underestimate the role that this music has played in this process of mine in both healing and growing.

Tomorrow, Dustin O'Halloran will be playing here in New York City and I will be there to see him perform live.   And I will not be there alone, I will be sitting beside and holding the hand of my New Yorker.

In yesterday's post, I wrote about how everything seems to make sense.  I can see and understand how and why the sequence of events in my life have taken place.  I took credit for most of what has happened by being an active participant in my life.  However, I cannot take all of the credit.  Call it luck, call it coincidence, call it what you like, but there are other factors outside of anyone's control that contribute as well.  Those surprises are the spices of life.  And timing... timing can be so crucial.

I was disappointed in the summer of 2012 when Dustin O'Halloran was last in NYC for a one night showing and I was out of town.  I was disappointed for not following him to Chicago to see him perform.  However, had I done that, tomorrow wouldn't be as special as it is going to be for me seeing him for the first time and after all the time spent with his music over the course of the past two years.  What is going to make tomorrow even more special is that I will be sharing this night with a man who is just as excited about tomorrow as I am, but for the simple fact that by my bringing him, I am letting him in.  He wants nothing more than to know me better and tomorrow he will get that.

The timing for this event could not be any more perfect.  You see, this man that I call my New Yorker.  He's more.  He is My Amazing.  I know that without a doubt in my mind.  It's been my emotions that have hesitated.  Only because moving forward, truly moving forward with someone means I need to let go of more.  I feel that there is already so much that I have had to let go of and only a bit that is left.  And it's hard.  But he is patient and understanding and I know that once I can let go of the last bit of guilt and sadness that I feel for all of the happinesses that come with find one's amazing, then that's when the amazing will truly begin.

Maybe tomorrow will be that beginning.

Per"sense"ion

For the past three years, I have spent an enormous amount of time and thought trying to make sense of everything.  I've thought about the events in my life.  I've thought about the people in my life.  I've thought about myself and my actions and reactions to all of the outside stimuli that have somehow entered into my own little world in some way.  And it all makes sense.  It fits.  I can see my life as a sequence of events that have built upon one another.  As time moved on and I changed and evolved, so did the situations that I found myself in.  I have been an active participant in my life and I can see how so much of how my life is at this moment is because of the choices that I made.   I created the life that I am living and that knowledge is both invigorating and powerful.

The other day though I came across a blog post that was shared on Facebook.  It was written by a mother to her daughter, a middle child.  Being a middle child myself and being one who sometimes played that card, I was curious, so I read, "A Letter of Apology to My Middle Child."  I couldn't help but to get teary eyed as I read it.  It was the part about finding yourself that really resonated with me.  I was/am stuck between an older sister and a younger brother.  However, it was having an older sister, with whom I was naturally similar to, that really made it difficult for me to find and define myself.  Many of the things that came naturally to her, I had to work hard at.  That instilled in me a desire to never want to be less or to disappoint especially when it was in something that we both did.  Then there was that part of me that tried to do different things just for the sake that they were different, different from her.  I can remember to this day how mad I was that she changed her major her junior year to teaching just after I declared my future major to be teaching.  I wanted that.  I didn't want to be following in her footsteps as I felt I did for so much of my life.  It was hard to find myself and I can't say that I really did, atleast not in high school.  And, I met Dale two months into my first semester my freshman year in college...

Why I was the way I was for the 32 years (prior to the last three years that have made complete sense to me) makes sense too.  I had a great childhood.  My parents were present and loving.  But I'm sure my mom felt alot like the mother who wrote that post.  Three kids, a house, a husband, a job... it's tough.  I know that my parents did the best that they could.  I am not blaming them, or my sister.  She was/is a great older sister/role model to have.  I think the kicker here is perception.  And it was mine.  It was how I perceived things to be.  That perception was powerful and it helped to mold and to create me into who I was back then.

Now, I'd like to say that it is something far more profound than perception that has created the me of today.  However, can we ever escape our own perceptions?  I don't think we can.  I feel comfortable saying that it is my perception that has now changed.  I do see the world differently.  And unlike before, I am looking at the big picture.  Twenty years ago, I was a child.  My world back then was what was right in front of me, within the walls of the small box that I lived in.  And when you are confined to a small area, you may not see the opportunities, the choices, the power and the freedom that you have in living your life.  They may seem too far out of that comfort zone and  out of reach.

That's part of growing up... to grow and expand that box.  You need to experience different things, take some risks, and follow your heart.  That's what will help you to become whom you were meant to be.  And when you do find yourself, that's when everything will fall into place and it will all make sense.
It's a great place to be.  :)

(Terrible title, I know, lol)