Sheepish Hello

Well, hi there.

A lot of things have happened since we last spoke, and I’m dreadfully sorry for the universes between my entries. I feel torn between being all grown up, and a masked version of the exact same girl who started this journal in the first place. I can’t remember where we left off, or what I was doing at the time. Here is what I do know:

In the last couple of years, I met Gregg. He was this handsome tall fellow hanging around at a mutual friend’s birthday party at our local pub. I liked him right away, mostly because he thought I was funny. This young man had to leave the party early, but was absolutely adamant that he wanted to spend more time with me. So adamant, in fact, that he insisted that we meet at NINE A.M the following morning for breakfast. We were off and running from there. Highlights include: Proposing to him in front of all our friends at the local watering hole, getting married barefoot on a beach in the Mayan Riviera surrounded by a small circle of family and friends, moving into our favorite neighborhood in Calgary, finally getting back into apartment living (house life wasn’t for me!),keeping our love alive through some difficult times, celebrating our three year Wedding Anniversary a few weeks ago at one of our favorite neighborhood restaurants, and being surprised by a gift of an “engagement” ring…Something I never had, as I was the one who did the asking!

All in all, it’s been a pretty good few years. It hasn’t all been Fairy Tales. (Although, I’ve always been better at remembering the good things rather than the bad) We hit hard times over the last two years, with the recession, and lay offs. We’ve not been without sacrifices.

My Handsome Tall Fellow has been working out of town Monday to Friday in order to get us back on our feet after a fairly intense financial rut. It’s only been a couple of months. It wasn’t until this afternoon, when I was discussing Tall Fellow’s late return (tomorrow afternoon instead of tonight), that I realized something was wrong. I was making light of the situation by saying “I guess it’s just me, the cats and Doctor Who tonight”,when my co-worker replied,”But don’t you get lonely?”. I thought when I answered, it would come out with my typical lighthearted “Of course I do!” and What came out instead was a “Yeah” that sounded like it was being chased by a lump of tears. I surprised myself. I’ve always been an independent creature, and when this arrangement began,I was excited to have a ton of time for myself. I was really looking forward to filling my nights with Yoga, coffee dates, and reading. Now that I look back over the last few weeks, I’ve realized that Yoga Classes are only about an hour, friends aren’t always available for coffee on weeknights, and that what I really need is someone to talk to. I feel isolated.

Not totally off topic, but a bit of a jog around the garden path: It’s funny, because I’ve realized within the last little while that I’ve always wrestled loneliness in my life, to some degree. I’ve always been fairly distant from my family. I think differently from most people, especially here in Alberta, but not differently enough to connect with the wilder folks on the fringe. One of the stranger parts is that I’m not a lone wolf by any stretch of the imagination. I have many friends, lots of friends!… Many of them for so long that they feel closer to me then my family (I guess you can really gauge that by who you call first in a crisis… For me, it’s always friends). I guess I’ve just always felt slightly the wrong shape, like I’ve had to struggle to find a fit. I guess it’s sort of like I haven’t mastered the art of blending in… I’m not sticking out like a sore thumb, but in the class picture of life, I’m definitely the slightly ungainly one, or the one with their eyes closed, or the only one not looking at the camera.

To sum up (As I have friends who are available for coffee chats tonight), my slow moving brain has finally figured out that I’m lonely from Monday to Friday. I’ve decided to start journalling again so I can spare my poor friends from the nightly phone calls where I ramble on about The World According To Kim. On a whim this afternoon, right before I left the office, I randomly popped onto this website to see if I could still get logged in. It took me a few tries. I finally remembered my password, and here I am. Some of my old Diary buddies seem to have moved on. But I’m still here.