voids

Son of a bitch.  I was talking with a very sweet co-worker this afternoon...it was this time last year that it started to become apparent that there were issues with John...that he was starting to have deficits.  We were looking at houses, and I sent him outside while talking with these people who were going to try to help us finance homes, and I watched him walk to the car.  I saw him drag his foot and asked him about it.  He was adamant that it was just the boots.  It did NOT look like just the boots.  Then, it turned out he forgot about Christmas gifts, and then lost the two he got me.  We did find the pink Chucks eventually, but not the other, whatever it was...and then it was January and things started to really go downhill.

Christmas is an anniversary, typically colored with love and fun and excess.  My job is to make it that for my kids, still.  Even though I have some sort of blow torch scorching every part of me that believed in anything good.  I keep putting my faith in various friends in different moments.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't...and then sometimes amazing strangers appear and, with names or without, offer us love and care.  I know that I am part of something bigger, that I must be doing some things right. I know that it helps.  And I also know it can only help in snippets.

Today, at least, I seem to be in a place where food is not so attractive.  Pretzels, a luna bar...a piece of pizza.  I'm not sure how to do any of this...and what hurts the most is that they eyes I want on me are not.  The eyes I REALLY want on me, never can be again.

NO ONE will ever replace him.  The strange thing is that, while I know this, it seems I didn't.  It seems that I wished that someone smart, interesting, anyone with that, would be there to hold me now that he is gone.  It wasn't that I wanted to replace him with someone.  It was that I wanted the void to be filled.  He was strange and unusual and talented, patient and loving and willing to try enough that I know and have always known that he can never be replaced...but I still wanted someone there in the void...that isn't how it works.  The ones who get that, they are the exception to the rule.

I realized tonight because of a very special interaction, that I would rather have kind and caring, honest and hard working people in my life than anyone else.  I thought, perhaps, I wanted smart people who were caring...and that would be ideal...but if it came down to the wire, my favorite people are those who have been through the fire...those who have retained an open mind and heart, or at least tried to...a great heart without a great mind is still a massive comfort.  A great mind without a great heart is like a challenging, functioning void.

There is enough in my life that counts as a void.  I don't need any more.