Outgoing

No matter how much I struggle in my life… I still find myself to be an outgoing person. That will never change. It’s something I just won’t lose. Because it’s a big part of who I am… not to mention it was a big part of what John loved about me. Hopefully others love it about me too. And hopefully someone someday can fall in love with me again and love me for it as well. It’s my character.
I make friends at airports. I make friends on planes. I mean, might as well? You are sitting next to another human being for a few hours and you can’t even say hello? I don’t know how other people do it really. Not become aquainted with those around them. It’s just odd to me. In the airport today I had two hours to just wait until my flight. I met a wonderful woman in line for Wendys. We laughed and talked waiting for our food. She has a great obsession with pickles and asked for a ton of them on her cheeseburger. It’s funny because I passed Wendys like 4 times before I finally decided that was where I wanted to eat. So, her name is Cat. And we start to chat… and I ask her to eat dinner with me. We have a fantastic conversation which included what we did for a living and where we are going for the holidays. She was going to New York to see her family. That’s where she is from. Currently she lives in Las Angeles and is the vice president of a tv network. Impressive, I know. She was telling me how she got to go visit Hans Zimmer’s composing hall. She said he composes in this place that looks like a theater. I was completely jealous! I love him!! She then invited me to go get her shoes shined with her. She was sooo excited about getting her boots shined. I have never seen someone get so much pleasure out of something so simple. She had such a fresh and bubbly personality. She mentioned how she doesn’t get to be this way at her job. She has to be the big bad boss… but this was really who she was. After wards she walked with me to some shops and I just felt like I could already open up to her. I told her all about John. I told her about losing him and the struggles I go through. I told the story so calmly. Almost as if the story wasn’t my own but another’s … or some folklore. It’s sometimes like I am telling a ficticious story. How could something so horrible happen at that time in someone’s life. How cruel to lose my fiancé after 17 days of engagement. 17 days after he turned 25. How cruel for me to find him. How sad how I now live alone and without him. I’m telling the story… and she is frowning. I don’t want her to be uncomfortable. But I keep telling it. Like I need to re-hash it. Like I need to tell the story as much as I can to make it more real. But I think it’s becoming less real. Am I still numb? After 7 months is that possible? Or am I accepting it? Doubtful.
Cat told me that God brought us together at the airport. She invited me out to visit her in L.A. She gave me her card and cell phone number and we made a pinky promise to text everyday with positive thoughts. (in fact we texted when each other boarded our planes)She says that so many people come to her office and it’s always bad news so I told her I would send good news every day. This will also be a good healing project for me… to find something positive in my life everyday. Because lately I have found that harder to search for. I have to dig a little deeper and sometimes I might only come up with something small.
The sun came up today. Ok, that’s good, right? My carpet doesn’t have any stains on it. My favorite TV show came on tonight. Lily didn’t pee in the bed in the middle of the night. I lost 1 pound.
That’s about it. It’s hard… but I know I have them. Blessings. I guess I just have put on my blinders. All I can focus on sometimes the crappy hand I was dealt with losing the love of my life that I can’t see past anything but that. It’s so hard. And it’s something you can quite get until it happens to me. As much as people try to encourage me and point me in a happier direction… I tend to get bitter. Because really what do they know? They haven’ gone through it. They don’t know. It’s SO EASY to tell someone “life will get better” when they stand on the other side of the fence. The whole grass is greener thing I have mentioned before. They are standing on the green grass and talking to me how life will get better. Really? You know this for sure? You have experienced this?
I know this sounds downright rude. I sound ungrateful. I am not. I am clearly bitter and slightly annoyed. I just want people to get real with me sometimes. I want them to really try to see things from my perspective. I am going to warn you. It will hurt. It will scare you. I thought about it a couple times when I was with John. One night I thought about it in bed and I just started bursting out in tears. I told John how scared I was to lose him. How I couldn’t imagine life without him. I don’t even know what brought this up… but it was probably just me sitting in bed and coming up with scenerios in my head and beginning to worry. I remember John holding me so tight. He held me and told me comforting words. “Sweetie, that’s not going to happen.” “I’m here and I am not going anywhere…”
Oh, John. Why couldn’t you be right?
So. Now I sit on the airplane (where I always get some of my best writing done) and think about my interactions with a stranger. And how that one interaction made my day a little brighter. And it made that person’s day a little brighter. That aspect of me that John loved so much still shines through. And perhaps that is also John shining through me. If he would have been with me he would have been just as social and we would have all left friends. That is just how we lived our life. We shared it with the world around us. Now I live for the both of us. Hoping each day that I will make him proud. That I will always try and bring out the things he loved best about me and the things I loved best about him.