Three Years On

I haven’t gone full metal Eeyore in a while. Ya know why? Ten.

On reading the very first comment he left here on Tell Me a Story, I felt a long dormant jolt. I wondered, the hell is this feeling. And then it came to me – OMG, this is a crush. I have a crush!

Yup. Big time. 

What’d he say to start me up? Dunno, can’t find it now (dammit!). He reminded me so much of The Amazing Bob though. Of course I knew he wasn’t TAB (duh) but, like TAB, Ten's kindness, gruff lived-a-life-or-three humor and smarts radiated.

Like I was caught in a tractor beam, I was pulled in.

I wondered, should I feel bad about this? After all, TAB had only been gone a couple years and I was still heavy with grief. I confessed my crushing to Jen. I made her read Ten's comments so’s she could tell me:

1. If he really did have a whiff of TAB about him
2. If having this big-ass attraction was too soon, unseemly and stone proof of my long suspected shallowness.
3. In my sea of grief, was I looking for a TAB replacement? That’d be pretty damn rude and unfair to Ten, ya know. Also too, I’d be setting my-own-self up for a Grand Canyon sized fall.

Jen allowed that:

1. Yes, Ten reminded her of TAB too. They seemed to have like sensibilities.
2. NO, it wasn’t too soon OR unseemly and, NO, I wasn't being shallow.
3. No. Though swimming in sad I was most def not scouting TAB successors. I just couldn’t imagine (and you all know that I have quite the active and expansive fantasy life) anyone tripping my trigger ever again.

And then a stranger appeared on the Western horizon.

You will lose someone you can't live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn't seal back up. And you come through. It's like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.
~ Anne Lamott

Ten and I are waltzing, tangoing and lindy hopping together now. We both have limps but that doesn’t stop the dance.

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to a better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now have moved on, sometimes this will bring hope.     
~ Elizabeth Gilbert

That was Michal. Michal lost her beloved four or five years before TAB took his final bows. She gave me hope.

Someone Saved My Life Tonight – Elton John