Our relationship was sudden, and accidental. I arrived October 29, 2004, by train with a few suitcases, to Seattle from Chicago. By October 31st, I kissed Jon while we were listening to some Edgar Allen Poe stories. We were friends, and I stayed over his apartment the night before, after a party, as a friend. I had originally planned to be staying at another friends’ place until I settled in to Seattle and found a job. I had spent the night of the 29th there, but I only went back when I needed to pick up my things to move in with Jon officially a week later.

I never really knew Seattle without Jon in it. We learned this city together, and created our worlds here. Together.

A month after arriving he would ask me to marry him. We wouldn’t announce to the family for just over a year later. We chose the month of April for our wedding. Jon would have preferred April 1st - and of course, that was a very sunny day, gorgeous view over Puget Sound at Discovery Park, right next to Daybreak Star. Instead, we were married a week later, at the same spot. It was cool and rainy, but at least we brought umbrellas for all attendees.

Jon and I were both on LiveJournal at the time I moved here, and April Fool’s Day, 2005, I was livid. He had tagged me in a post, saying that I was pregnant, and that we were dropping everything to move to NY where his family was. We got quick congratulations, and I insisted in near panic that he shut it down and refute it, and then after, swear to NEVER do anything like that again.

There are arguments I never got to have, peace I didn’t get to make, “I told you so’s” that I never got to say. I’m cursed with an inner narrator and years of a script ready for the right time to make my case and clear the air. Even great relationships have their moments, and the weight of grief and gravity of sorrow can give energy to blind anger, lightning to cloud.

What do you do with that?

I remember a time where I could meditate - not just medicate or dissociate - through intense anxiety and pain both emotional and physical. I know it’s a skill that can be cultivated again, but that’s a job on top of all the others I have, that I just can’t do right now.

So pain is in the pink flowers on the trees. Pain is in the quiet night scrolling. It hides its face behind tasks and obligations, but it’s there in the quiet. It follows and keeps pace in blue skies and sunlight, camera up to trace the limbs of budding trees to the sky, watching as I pull my camera down, flitting to the peripheral if I try to get an actual look, pulling at my ankles if I stare too long.

What do you do with that?

It’s a lonely business, being a widow. I had to remind myself today that I’m still in my “Year of Whatever,” and I can only hope what eccentricities are laid bare are loved and forgiven by me first and foremost, and by others who understand, at least intellectually, that there’s no easy way for me to get through this, I’m having to figure this out as I go, and realizing for Jon and I it was us against the world, and I’m in a new state where I don’t want to have to fight so hard any more. And I want to be able to trust that I can stand down, and that things won’t fall apart.

Take me to a movie. Take me to a show. Take me out to dinner. Show me the beautiful things you have found.

I don’t want to talk or process or cry. I want to rejoin the world and engage with it in embodied real time. I want to listen to music and stories and marvel with other humans, not just the absolute horrors, but the wonder that drives so many of to create and seek resonance.

Don’t leave me alone.

Be gentle out there.