Thursday, October 20, 2005 12:04 AM
ryanseals
Not scared!!!!
Needless to say, it's been a long 18 months.
Since the time Ryan's been gone, I've lived in three places and had two
jobs (OK, one was an internship). I've sprouted five to seven gray
hairs on my hairline. (Bastards, you're going down!) And I've probably
consumed more Diet Mountain Dew than any human being should reasonably
ingest.
This past weekend, I moved into a new apartment, the third one -- one
that will fit Ryan, myself and our massive amounts of stuff. (For
example, my 18,000 stuffed pigs. Um. Yeah.) And as I was closing the
door on my old apartment -- the one I've lived in the majority of the
time Ryan's been gone -- I flung up my arm, waved, and yelled,
"Goodbye, sad apartment!"
Everyone just kind of grinned at me. I realized it was a feeling of exaltation that only I truly understood.
That old apartment trapped me. It was a perfectly nice apartment. But
it was everything I didn't want -- which is to say, it was my life
without Ryan. Every night after work, I dreaded coming back to it. Its
emptiness. Everything scared me. I'd check in every room, under the
bed, in every closet. I lived in fear, unease. The fear I had of Ryan
being in Iraq carried over into my everyday life.
Ryan will never live here, it taunted.
This is your life, alone.
Then I moved. I couldn't move fast enough. (Thanks to my millions of friends, the move
was fast!)
I shut the door on the sad apartment and turned around to see a new
one. A new one that Ryan and I will live in. One that I'm not scared to
come home to. It has more rooms, but I don't need to check in them
anymore. I don't need to peek in every closet and behind every shower
curtain. I'm feeling something I haven't felt in a long time. It's all
coming back to me.
Freedom. Security. And hope.
-- Christy