What I Least Expected

I don't blog because I don't feel like anything new is going on. I don't feel that I have any witty stories or experiences worth sharing... yet when I do have the urge to just sit and write, I get this feeling that too many things have happened since the last post and there is just no way to provide an update that could include everything.
Makes no sense to me.

Also I am trying to cut the habit of only writing when something is wrong. I've figured out that I don't like talking about the bad stuff, so I write instead. But when things are great or nice, I'm quick to talk about it and leave it off the blog.
I'm sure this isn't uncommon.

So this is a mix of both. Normally I'd be sitting here talking about the past, how I miss my father and how his death affects me to this day, the little things that constantly remind me of him and prod at my heart in an unpleasant manner and the other intricacies of grief that sneak up on me on a daily basis.
Thursday, July 12th, was the 5th anniversary of my father's death.
There is something odd about 5's and their multiples. Something... like if you were to write out the number of years since a person's death, it would look like this:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15

Why? I'm not sure. I always thought it was something specific to me; my mother died when I was 5 so when I turned 10, the 5 years that she had been gone equalled half of my life and it scared me a bit... and when I turned 15, the ratio of time she had been in my life had been reduced to a third... so 5 has always been this alarming number to me.

But this 5 year anniversary was different. Instead of having it cause me to reflect on the past, it opened my eyes to the future. A certainty that I would normally consider arrogant had appeared before my eyes.

The days leading up to the 12th threw me for a loop. I couldn't find my car in parking lots (my big red truck had become so elusive), I wanted to just stay in bed, and a skin condition that popped up a year ago around this time mysteriously surfaced again -- Almost to the day it did last year.

The 11th was uneventful, a quiet dinner alone followed by the squink squink sound of a windex bottle as I wiped windows and mirrors clean... the occasional glance at myself in the mirror, the reflection of a slight smirk as I realized that once again, I was trying to postpone any sad feelings by distracting myself with the celebratory feelings of finally removing that rust stain on the bathroom sink.

I'm no stranger to feeling alone, and although that feeling has substantially decreased over the past year, it is around this time of year that it reaches it's peak. I surrendered to this feeling yet again, and armed with my cup of tea, I went to bed. I laid there for about an hour until the phone rang. It was Mark. It was 2am. He was at my door.

When I felt most alone, he was there. It was like a dream.... but I should have known better. He's Mark, he's amazing, and although I don't expect him to do these things, I am fully aware that he is capable of making me incredibly happy. The kind of happy that makes your eyes well up when you think about it, the kind of happy that you wish you could cut into pieces and give to your friends because it feels like so much happy shouldn't all go to one person.

The kind of happy that makes you certain of your future.