Saturday, October 23, 2010

holy long absence, batman!

so after poking a facebook friend to read my blog and then i'll read hers i decided to see how long it's been since i blogged and was gobsmacked to find out it's been two plus months! then again, the past two months have been very full. just two days after my last blog, on august 8th, my sweetheart fry was in a very bad car accident and nearly killed. thank the gods he was able to walk away. here's what happened:

he was headed north on round lake boulevard in anoka. it's a two lane highway, the speed limit is 55 mph. a car was stopped to make a left. so the car in front of fry stopped. and fry stopped. and there's where it got ugly. the 20-something girl behind him "looked down for a second" when she looked up everyone was stopped. she jerked the wheel to the right and slammed on her brakes but hit the back right of fry's yaris hard enough to bend the axle and plow his car into the car in front of him and into oncoming traffic where his car was then hit again by a full size dodge ram pickup. his car was completely totaled out. and everyone who talked to us in the weeks after said usually the driver doesn't live in accidents like this:


even now with him sitting next to me eating bbq pringles and watching a very bad "meteor destroys earth movie" knowing he's safe. knowing he's ok. i get panicky and tears threaten to run because i came so very close to losing him. my heart races and my throat closes and i want to drop to my knees and thank the gods for sparing him.

he did actually WALK away from this accident. he got himself out of the car. called me when i was on my way to my part time job and said "i was just rear ended, do you think you can give me a ride?" i asked if he was ok and he said yeah, fine, he just needed a ride. thankfully i didn't see the car until the next day when i went to empty it for him. he didn't even want to go to the hospital, i made him because he had the seat belt mark embedded in his chest and kept saying he wanted to sleep and i was worried about a head injury. thankfully the full extent of his injuries were deep bruises, some slight ligament tears, and partially detached muscle. minuscule in relation to what could have been.

august was filled with helping fry recover. find a new car. both of us learn to be ok riding in cars without fearing the person behind us was out to kill us. i still sometimes feel anxiety when driving. and even more so when i'm passenger. his sister came up to visit from hawaii. we saw weird al at the state fair. life was getting back to normal.

and then bad news from the west. my uncle john, my uncle joe's younger brother, was getting weaker. my aunt sharon emailed us asking for prayers. not prayers for a cure or a miracle. but prayers for comfort and peace and no pain. then in the evening on wednesday september 8th, a month to the day after fry's accident, my cousin rico called to tell us the doctors said my uncle would be lucky to make it 24 hours and they would be simply shocked if he made it through the weekend. my dad packed a bag. tossed and turned all night. and headed west early on the 9th. he made it to the hospital in north dakota just before 2pm on the 9th. he spent a few final hours with his best friend/brother before my uncle john died on september 10th just before 5am.

so with a lot of fear of driving, cars, and dying behind the wheel: i got in my saturn and drove west to say good bye. i returned to the town i was born in. a town i hadn't seen in 30 years and 2 months and 29days. all in all i spent less than 24 hours in that north dakota town before returning east again. to home.

now, not like any of this is ALL about me, but i had just started to gain my balance again and completely had the pins knocked out from under me. my uncle john was my godfather. one of the steadies in my life. i still have both my parents, but i always thought that when the time came that i lost one of them my uncle john would be the one to hold me up and give me strength and he would still be there to take care of me. i wanted to see his face when i received my mfa from hamline. i thought he'd dance with me at my wedding. that he'd hold my babies and they'd call him grandpa john. i've had to learn to live again in a world without him. and, honestly, i hate that. but i'm trying not to resent it too much. trying not to have too much animosity towards the heavens for taking him.

it's exhausting to be thanking the gods for sparing fry while at the same time cursing them for taking my uncle john. oh, and then, the day my uncle died it was announced that i got a promotion at work. seriously. talk about an emotional mixed bag. but. blessing too? because i needed something new at work. a new challenge to better use my talents and skills. i'd been in my previous position for nearly 3 years and it was time for a change.

sum up? so, the past 2 1/2 months = nearly losing my lover, my uncle dying, and a promotion.

did i mention that i also have stopped seeing my therapist & nutritionist and decided i'm well enough to tackle this whole eating disorder thing on my own? but, you know what? maybe i am. because all of this could have sent me into a serious spiral and caused me to starve myself again. and it hasn't. i have my moments of poor choices, but everyone does. it's called being human.