I'm Not as Sad as I Let Myself Believe Sometimes

The most amazing thing has happened, and when I say amazing, I mean amazing, like hallelujah, get-down-on-your-knees, praise-the-figurative-lord amazing. Something bad happened to me, and I had no desire to tell Jonathan. At all. He wasn't even a thought. Not an inkling. Not a blip. (I'm dancing on my butt (to Carr, if you're curious) while I think about it right now.) I'd say that might not seem like a very big deal to you, especially not a hallelujah, get-down-on-your-knees, praise-the-figurative-lord, amazingly big deal, but if you read my blog - and well, if you're here, you obviously do - you know that it is. Just in case you need reinforcement for that, though, let's look at some different something-bad-that-happened-to-me situations, the first one from about two years back.

Something-bad-that-happened-to-me, situation one: It's August of 2023. I get upsetting news, news that in retrospect was mildly upsetting although at the time, seemed devastating, devastating enough that all I could do was sob from the time I got the news at about 1:30 in the afternoon until I went to bed that night with intermittent lulls of sniffles here and there (yet further proof that hallelujah, I am healed because this current bad thing is for all intents and purposes way worse but it's made me about a-thousand-and-one-times less upset. Maybe even a thousand and two). The second I got that news, all I wanted was Jonathan. I wanted him to listen to me, I wanted him to comfort me, I wanted him to play the role he'd played for the previous three years, which, to an extent he did because when I text him, he FaceTimed me and after talking for hours, I was less of a mess than I'd been before the call. 

Something-bad-that-happened-to-me, situation two: December, a few months later. As you all know, my father passed away. Immediately I wanted Jonathan again, for the same reasons listed above. This time instead of FaceTiming me, he came to my house to help with a few things, making me feel better once again.

Something-bad-that-happened-to-me, non-specifice situations: Periodically over the next year until I decided to not return his last text, it was more of the same. Something bad would happen, something would make me upset, and Jonathan was the first thing I'd want. I'd text him, he'd calm me down. After last September, though - or I guess if you want to get technical, a year ago from the September that just passed - that pattern stopped or at least the me-reaching-out-to-Jonathan part. He'd still be the first thing that came to mind when something bad happened, when something would make me upset, but I'd just sit with my sadness, missing Jonathan and the security-blanket effect he used to have, compounding the initial sadness I felt. 

Well. 

That longing for Jonathan? That compounded sadness? That, people who read my blog, is a thing of the past. 

Although this development, this realization that I'm completely over Jonathan came as a surprise, it shouldn't have. The signs were there. 

On his birthday, my present to myself was deleting our thread of texts. I also did away with the traces of him I was holding in this house: The mail addressed to him from nursing programs that had been sitting on my little bar cart? In the trash. The open Japanese curry block that had been sitting in the fridge and the unopened box on the pantry shelf? Same place. The I will always love you! he wrote on the whiteboard in my kitchen at some point after we broke up and the It's true! he added to that message when he came to my house after my father's death? Erased. The Jonathan box that used to sit on the nightstand in my closet so it would be accessible if I needed it? Relegated to the top shelf of my closet next to the Glenn and Louie boxes I need a chair to reach. 

And the most telling of all? The bewilderment I feel when a picture of him pops up in my memories. I look at him, and I think, Really? How? 

I was about to say I'm not sure when it happened exactly, but I think that's wrong. Although I've been moving through life as if it hadn't happened, telling myself I'm stuck in a quagmire of hopelessness and loneliness with no branch to grasp, that was much more due to my proclivity for the dramatic than the truth. The truth is that somewhere between here

and here

the change began. 

I'm thinking it was here 

and can pretty much definitively say by here

it was complete.

Between Salt Lake City and Montana, something in me changed. Unfortunately, until now I was too enmeshed in the story about myself I tell myself (along with anyone who will listen) to realize it, which means, of course, the universe did what it deemed necessary to make me see what I couldn't see by myself. 

***

My sister is a huge believer of things happen for a reason. I'm not. There are too many horrible things in this world for me to think there's a reason they occur. As you know, however, I do believe there are certain things that the universe, for one reason or another, can't ignore. Why? I have no idea. I can't pretend to know how the universe works or why some things matter more than others to it. But I do know many years ago, I blogged these exact words: 

It felt like this stupid cliche my dad sent me in an email once that read "When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane." At least I think that's what it said. Or maybe it was about a fish? Something about swimming against the current maybe? I don't know, but either way, the message was the same:

Signs. Heed the signs. I personally try to ignore them, but it never works out. I just can't make my way through the oncoming traffic. Or all the damn fish.

***

And so, here I am. After failing to see what I couldn't, the universe did what it had to do to make me see what I was blind to on my own. 

The situation? Muy malo, for sure.

Closing the cover on Bug Warrior and Kelligralamb, the Early Years: What Happens When a Video Game Virtuoso and a Buffy the Vampire Slayer Fanatic Fall in Love?

Priceless.