Reality is very unfriendly. Reality isn’t the rainbows and starshine we think it will be when we finally grow up. Sometimes I wonder if I have finally grown up or not. I always feel like I am waiting for my life to really begin. Its how I managed to waste so much of my time and so much of my effort in life. Always thinking that “someday” things will be a certain way, and feeling that I just have to get through whatever it is at the moment and then things will be how I want them. I tend to focus so much on what I want DIFFERENT in life that I don’t enjoy what life has given me at the present moment. I understand the importance of goals, and working towards them – but there has to be balance in that. You have to still appreciate the present, be joyful and happy with what you have right at this moment, no matter how big or small.
I feel like I wasted so much joy while I was married to Justin. So much of our life was struggling to make ends meet, working long hours to keep a roof over our heads and potatoes in our bellies. It’s all we could afford for a long time. While we did have fun, and those times are more precious to me than gold, and I would NEVER trade them for anything in the world – I feel like I was too focused on that elusive future. That future that never came or happened. Because of that intense focus, I took for granted all the little joys that I look back on now with sorrow.
Today, we went to the game shop to show T (Ed’s daughter) all about Magic the Gathering and buy her some dice. She is only 9, and was excited to pick out sparkly purple dice. The store has all kinds of nerdy things, like role playing games, miniatures, gamer type stuff that you need when you play some weird obscure board game or whatever. They also carry some really neat Star Wars stuff. Well, Justin and I were both Star Wars freaks and we collected anything and EVERYTHING Star Wars. I used to really love the little tiny Micro-Machines toys that they came out with. At the game store, they had a Hoth play set of miniatures and Ed was showing them to T and telling her what all the vehicles were. She was having a ball learning about it, and I could tell Ed was loving the fact that he could share something that he loved so much with her. And it hit me… All those moments like that I had with Justin… looking at all the little toys at the store. I really miss things like that. Justin would sometimes come home with a little micro-machines set to surprise me with, or some other little Star Wars thing. I was always so happy when he would do things like that. I can honestly say that I have cherished everything he has ever given me, whether it was something Star Wars, or expensive jewelry, all the way to little notes he would leave me all the time randomly to say he loved me, or even a note saying he was going to the store and he would be right back. I have all that stuff – every note, every scrap of paper he doodled on. I have always felt those things were precious and special. I have only been that way with 3 other people in my life, and those are my grandparents.
I guess the problem is that I am struggling with the feeling that I deep down inside, I think I knew that my time with Justin was truly limited. I think about all the nightmares I had about something happening to him, all those times when I had a terrible gut feeling. Even times when I would literally break down into tears after he walked out the door because I was so afraid something would happen. When we split up, it was absolutely the hardest thing I had ever done up until Justin’s death. When he decided to move out of the house, I cried, begged and begged and begged over and over for him to stay at the house. I was ready to just give it all to him – he wouldn’t have ever paid another dime for a place to live. I really did have a bad feeling that if he left that house, something bad would happen and it was not something I ever got past. I asked him over and over to break his lease and move back to the house when he was having so much trouble with his neighbors. I asked him to move back when I moved up to Oklahoma. Heck, I even asked him to move to Oklahoma City and that I would buy him a house up here! He kept saying that he didn’t want to live in that Arlington house. Finally, once I had tenants move in, he decided he wanted the house. So like Justin to wait until the decision is made before he makes his mind up. I wanted to boot the tenants so bad… and I really should have. They ended up wrecking the house. It broke my heart to see all the hard work we put into it all destroyed. That will be resolved in the courts however since they decided they didn’t owe me the rent they neglected to pay and for the air conditioners they stole and everything else the managed to destroy. That however, is another LONG blog entry. Getting back to my bad feelings…. I think that a lot of my guilt is related to those bad feelings, that is somehow I could have acted on them maybe I could have made different decisions that would have an end result of him being alive and happily moving into the house of his dreams. It’s the whole, if you are aware of it – then you can do something about it thing mixed with hind site. It physically hurts me to think about it to be honest. God knows I would do anything to change what happened. I hate that Justin died, and I hate the way he died. He deserved so much more out of life, and he deserved a better death. Justin was such a rare person, he was one in a billion men. I am glad that I always knew that and appreciated it.
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