Star Wars Episode VII *SPOILERS*

HEY, HERE THERE BE STAR WARS SPOILERS. STOP READING IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SPOILED.

Due diligence done, I'm going to write about my Star Wars experience tonight. To start, let's go back to the early 80s. I was a single digit aged child, with an older brother who was obsessed with the Millenium Falcon, Han Solo and the Force. In the future, a mini R2D2 would sit on his dashboard. He and his friends would run around the yard pretending sticks were light sabers and argue over who got to be Han and who got to be Luke. To settle your questioning minds, once it became clear that Han gets Leia, Chris was *always* Han. This is important later.

Beyond that I recall thinking that Leia was cool, but she always needed to be rescued. I mean, the first movie opens with her begging Obi-Wan for help and, yes, she can weild a blaster, but she never got a cool sword! To a six year old me, this seemed totally unfair. If I tried to be Vader or Luke, I was told "You're a girl. You can't be a Jedi! You can't be a Sith! You have to wait for one of us to rescue you." This is probably largely why I adored She-Ra as much as a I did. She had a sword and didn't have to wait, tied up in a jump rope, bored while the boys got to smack each other with sticks.

I yearned for a character that I wanted to be. I yearned for a girl who didn't end up in chains or stuck in some side room by the hero so that she wouldn't get hurt. I even recall Leia hanging on to Luke while they swing on his rope, and clearly thinking "Why doesn't she get her own rope? Why does she have to hang on to him like that?"

Fast forward to December 2015 and I'm now 35 years old. Chris never made it to see anything beyond the release of Episode II. Can you imagine that? For him the saga ends with Anakin riding a weird CGI beast through the fields of Naboo. Ugh. He never even got to see the half assed payoff of Anakin becoming Vader. Sure, he missed nothing, but he already stomached the lead up. I think that seems like the worst.

So I'm in this theater and I'm reliving watching the Star Wars movies (originals) with him. There's Leia and Han and Chewy and C3PO! There's the Millenium Falcon flying like a dream, and at the helm one seriously bad ass chick with full chest coverage! It was *everything* to me. There were women in the control room of the First Order. There was a woman villain (please fucking kick ass, Phasma, please please please), Leia is now a General, and there are even female X-Wing fighter pilots! I finally saw human beings with boobs acting like humans instead of foils to the men. No longer were they just prizes! I even had a moment of appreciation for POC having a leading man in one of the largest franchises in the world! That felt amazing!

The screen showed dogfights and light sabers and familiar faces and I felt warm, like I was sharing it with Chris even though he isn't here to see it. I felt like I could hear him freak out and cheer and get excited over the reunions.

And then it happened. The worst thing that could happen played out.

There's a bridge, a familial connection, and as Han shouted the name my skin turned to ice. I couldn't stop what was happening, I could only beg silently for my mind to be wrong. Not Han. Take Chewy, take Leia, bring Lando back to die. Anyone but him.

I'm sure there was a ton of context happening that will be revealed later. I wasn't fooled when Snape killed Dumbledore, I knew there was some other bigger twist coming, and I recognized it here. But the moment of the kill, the visual of him dying there on that bridge was hell. It wasn't just Han, it was him too. It was feeling the loss of a beloved character tied so strongly to someone I had *just* been feeling connected to in the movie. We had just been flying together in the Falcon. I could fucking hear him in his "King of the World" moment, and then, just like Han, he was gone.

I've very rarely had a movie cut that deeply, reach parts of me that I keep to myself, but J. J. Abrams reached in, pulled it out of me and threw it up on the screen. I will be drawn to the rest of this story. If anything it's now deeply ingrained and I need to finish it for him. For us. For me.

So dear Mr. Abrams,

Thank you for making a movie that expanded beyond the screen. But please don't take it personally when I say I hate you for making me live in a world where another piece of Chris is gone.

Sincerely,

Heartbroken 6-year-old Trapped In A Woman's Body

Smoke and Memorials

We all know about the existence of every day heroes. Men and women who leave the comfort of their beds at night to respond to an emergency. Be they EMTs, Parameds, or Firefighters, when they call, you become their priority. But how many of us ever get the chance to try it? How many of us get to live as they do for even a moment?

I grew up with a father who was a volunteer firefighter. His pager would drop tones, and away he'd run in his pajamas. Off to save a life, off to help someone through the traumatic experience of disaster. When other children said Superman was their hero, mine was always my father. And it runs deep in my blood.

My sister and cousins of mine have risked their necks for the safety and service of people they do not even know. And I know this. I know they run to the station. I know they wear uniforms. I know some of them have turn out gear. They drive emergency vehicles. But only this year have I ever gotten to really understand some of the greater experiences they live on a daily basis.

I've ridden in firetrucks. I've seen the lights. I've swerved to the side of the road to let them pass. I've been in the station when they come back, when they take off their gear and reveal they were sleeping, they were studying, they were enjoying their evening but dropped it to run to the call. But I've never been in their boots.

So all of that leads to this. At the end of September, I took my camera and shipped myself to Michigan to spend time with my sister at the Michigan Fireman's Memorial (MFC) in Roscommon. Why not? I slept in the station for Tip Up Town. I can run their radio if they need more hands on deck. I can run water to scenes and offer auxiliary support. So why not see more?

It was exciting for me, camping with Jen. Jumping into full immersion of her life. Seeing a part of her that I did not first forge ahead with. And what did she do? She made sure I got the full taste.

Roscommon Township FD runs an event called the Smokehouse Challenge. Ten teams from around the state compete to see who can get into their gear fastest, get to the three story building, and in smoke thick enough to hang a nail in, find two heavy dummies in under 15 minutes. Think it sounds like a cake walk? I saw well built men stumble out gasping for breath, red faced and hurt.

More to the point of this, the day before the competition, with smoke machines just pouring out the smoke, the local news crew wanted a mock run into the building for a quick newsreel tidbit. And for the very first time in my life, I got to see more of this life than I ever thought to.

My sister put me in her gear. I've worn her coat, I've donned her helmet before. But this was the whole shebang. And in it, I felt comfortable enough. Foreign to be sure, but it wasn't overly warm that morning and the gear isn't so dreadfully heavy as to be impossible. Even with her mask on, I was able to breathe ambient air through it. Warm from my breath but not difficult. But as she strapped that helmet on my head... it suddenly started getting very real for me. The mask was close, the gear made me feel like I was in a cocoon. Suddenly my brain sabotaged me with the thought... 'How fast can I get this off if it becomes too much?' The answer came back.. 'Not soon enough.'

But I would not lose it here. Jen does this for a living. There was no real danger! It's just a smoke house! Just two minutes in a smoke house! No fire. No flames. So I walked to the door, and met the guy from another department who would be taking the lead. "We're going in on our knees. Hold on to my boot and do NOT let go." Sure! Easy! Well.. wait. Now that I'm on my knees.. these gloves are bulky and your boot. It's big and my small hands are having trouble keeping hold. What if I get lost?

And then, just before they hit record, my sister reached down and clicked the little button that changed me from breathing ambient air to the forced air in the tank. And I about lost my shit. Have you ever breathed from a tank like that? You have to work to exhale and it sounds like Darth Vader. My heart rate skyrocketed and before I could chicken out, my guide took off. I clambored after his foot, clutching to it like I might die if I lost it.

I didn't even get all the way into the door before my brain spazzed the hell out. No visual save a thick, roiling cloud of smoke and the heel of the boot I was clutching. I could not even see my hand, I had no idea of the layout, and my tank and mask hissed in my ears as I tried to get my body to adjust to this new form of breathing. We crawled in and around a corner, out of sight and crouched with me clinging to his boot.

It's here that my mind started being a real dick. I'm shaking even recalling it. I sat there, trying not to move, trying not to be seen by the camera (which unknown to us had stopped rolling before we even got through the door). Beyond my mask the room was black, unseen and unseeable. But in my mind's eye, I could see the flames rolling across the ceiling. I could hear the timbers and furniture going up in a roar. It was no longer a game.

I closed my eyes tight shut for a second and heard my sister's voice in my head. 'Just breathe. Calm down and you go home.' I forced myself to slow my breathing as I sat there. I forced myself to at least try and not panic. So many times I nearly grabbed my guide to say I was not ok and needed to get out pronto. So many times I almost cried out for Jen.

While all of this was going on in my head, it's prudent to point out something that happened to just give more perspective on how I was affected. The air tanks have a sensor on them. If you stop moving, it fires off two or three warning beeps and then blares a whistle to alert other firefighters that you might be in trouble and where you are. My ONLY job in this smokehouse besides holding his boot was to wiggle my sensor when it gave the warning beeps. That's it. And I was so swallowed up in everything in my head that I never heard the warning beeps and did not know what alarm was going off for a full five seconds.

My guide helped me to stand, and then led me out of the door. Someone reached over and shut off my alarm but I was focused only on Jen. I barely reached her before I begged her to take the gear off, hands and legs shaking. She has a video of me emerging, and my nose and mouth are covered by the mask, and above that I was all eyes. Huge as saucers.

My time in there was sobering. I was in no real danger, but my mind just would not have it. The things that went through my head were frightening and I was truly terrified. Perhaps with some practice with breathing through those tanks, and crawling in that gear and I might have had a chance to not be so panicked. But I wouldn't have traded that either. That experience will stay with me forever.

But my lesson wasn't over.

The Memorial is just that. It's in honor of those who have lost their lives to save others. There is a statue near the fairgrounds. The statue sits on a base and the base has the names of firefighters who died while on duty etched into it. Behind, a wall bears the names of firefighters who died but not while on duty.

One of the newest names on the base was Wohlke. With the memory of being in that smoke still very sharp, my sister quietly told me about this man. On a structure fire, he had gone in and gotten lost. His voice was drowned out in the radio traffic. One of the things they train you to do is find the hose and follow it out. Wohlke found the hose. But he followed it the wrong way. His final, unheard transmission of "Wohlke out of air." was recorded. He never made it out.

Could I imagine dying that way? Could I imagine even risking that? No. Jen says that gear is her skin and those tanks are her lungs. And that if she dies in the line of duty, she dies doing what she loves. But I've seen what that's like. I've seen just the kiddie pool version of that and it was enough to frighten me.

To see that name etched there. To have an idea of what that was like. To understand the risks my sister and others like her take on a regular basis without second thought.. I have nothing. No words. It brings me to tears if I linger on those thoughts for too long. And the level of respect there is unmeasurable.

So if you know a firefighter, an EMT, or a paramedic, take five seconds to tell them 'thank you'. Take two minutes and get your ass out of the way when you hear those sirens. And when you go to bed at night, know that while you sleep, they watch, they wait and they stand ready to respond. And they don't even know you.

My Sunshine

I woke early this morning to the yowling of my beloved companion Avalon. I knew something was wrong, but it wasn't until I rushed out and discovered her on the carpet that my husband and I realized just how wrong. Her back legs were stretched out behind her and she was panting in pain. After a  cursory check from Matt to see if she'd suffered a spinal injury, we loaded her into the cat carrier and sped to the Emergency Vet Clinic 20 minutes away.

We must have sat in the room while they checked her out for an eternity. But I've grown up with cats. Barn cats, house cats, you name it, and have dealt with every issue and illness that could befall them. I knew this was not going to be an easy choice, and I found myself having to decide.

It came back that she had a blood clot that had landed in her back and cut off circulation to her legs. Further, she was in heart failure, and struggling to keep her breath. There was no guarantee she'd ever be well enough to leave the hospital. Even less surety that she wouldn't have another clot break free soon and this time it might lodge in her brain.

I struggled with my choice... because 12 years ago...

I saw her in this old barn. My ex-husband had dragged me there to look at a trailer to haul one of his many junker project cars. She had a whole litter of brothers and sisters just like her, but she was the one who was too fat to run away. I picked her up, and that was the end of it. She came home with me.

I named her Avalon, because I'd just read the book "Mists of Avalon" and her grey fur reminded me of mists. I wasn't going to go with the common Misty, even if it is cute. Avalon struck me as her perfect name. And so began a close friendship, a companionship that is as responsible for making me who I am today as any other friendship in my life.

We weathered the whole shebang together. When Jason took his anger out on me, it was Avalon who snuggled to my side. When I was at my loneliest, she was the one who curled up by my head and purred to let me know it'd be alright. When we lost everything, she and I slept together on the floor.

My fondest memories with her in Michigan are when my cancer scare came up. For three months between diagnosis and surgery, she would curl up on my chest, bury her face in the crook of my neck and we'd just try to get through the harder moments together.

I would sing "You Are My Sunshine" to her, because when it got dark, she always shone a little light in, reminding me that life and love are always around.

When Matt came like a brave knight valiant to sweep me off my feet, he swept Avalon right along with me. He didn't have to love her as I did, but he did. After men who kicked her or belittled her, he gave her a soft hand, warm food, and a home for both of us. The look of adoration in her eyes when she curled up with him is proof of that. She loved him just as much in return.

And so it was that Matt took care of us both in the hospital today. He held her in a blanket as we said our goodbyes. He held her as the vet gave the final shot. I couldn't even be in there when it happened, but he was. He stayed with her just like he promised the both of us. When I came back in the room, I cried into her fur one more time and sang our song.

She will be cremated and her ashes placed in an urn. I can't bear to leave her here when her family and her life will move away in a year. Today wasn't goodbye forever. It's just goodbye for right now.

You are my sunshine
My only sunshine
You make me happy
When skies are gray

You'll never know, dear
How much I love you
Please don't take
My sunshine away

The other night, dear
As I lay sleeping
I dreamed I held you
In my arms
But when I woke, dear
I was mistaken
And I hung my head
And I cried.

RIP Avalon Murphy

Piece of Me

It looks like pretty much every other canopy bed you can find. Nothing too special, but it's pretty enough. In the end of 2003, I had been through a ringer and wanted to make some kind of attempt to steady myself. Prove to myself that what I needed most (stability and ability to make my life come to heel) was inside me all along. But lets look back at 2003 in summary, shall we?

On April 8th, 2003 the bad year for me began. Some of you may realize that this was my 23rd birthday. That morning, my bed caught fire due to the overuse of an old heating blanket. It destroyed my bed, and I ended up sleeping on a terribly uncomfortable water bed for a few months. This will come in to play later.

In July, I lost my brother and my maternal grandmother within three days of each other, a change that sent my finely crafted world of denial into a tailspin. It culminated in me deciding to leave my abusive marriage and choose a life by myself. What I didn't know is that this was the first time I would be forced to give up everything.

My car, the beautiful dishes my grandmother had given to me, and several other small but personally valuable things that got hauled off in boxes by the ex that I never saw again. If they were my price to pay to be free of him though, then I would begrudge it (except for those dishes. If I ever find those again, I will never part with them.)

Shortly after regaining my freedom, I lost my job. The plant I worked at shut down and I spent a bitter winter on a picket line, living like a hobo in the snow around a barrel fire, protesting my job being shipped to Mexico. I earned half pay rate doing this, and eventually when my tax return came in, my mother took me out for some retail therapy. It warrants mention that the ex took the waterbed with him, so I was sleeping on the couch.

That's when I saw it, the bed she knew I'd fall in love with. I blew half my refund on it without a single iota of regret. We bought black mosquito netting and draped it over the canopy, and mom helped me to braid it around the posts so it looked like some Bollywood inspired maharajah bed. I bought the entire set shown in the picture: vanity, ettache, end tables and even the bench that went at the foot of it (not pictured).

I loved my bed. My girl friends came over and flopped onto it, laughing that it was like the bed of a princess or some foreign queen. Every time I saw it, I got to have that moment of "I did this. Despite it all, I did something nice for myself."

Fast forward to the winter of 2008. The bed had, due to space constraints, been disassembled for about 6 months when we lost the house. I have other entries on what that was like that go in depth, but I must needs touch on it again here. We had to pack up a two story, three master bedroom farmhouse to move to a small, three bedroom ranch style house. I'll do the math for you: we had to get rid of a lot.

Our family heirlooms went off to local museums (including the tatted lace my great grandmother made), and I gave away or sold roughly 25% of the things that I thought other people might want. The rest was exploded around my bedroom in piles. No organization, just chaos and what looked like my entire life strewn around the room. I had a set amount of boxes, and I grabbed what I thought was important.

But it's a hard road to walk. We were emotionally shattered to begin with. Everyone was to the end of their rope. Tempers ran hot, tears flowed freely, and not one of us managed to make it out with scars. I remember very clearly being tired. The heat, which was moderate at best in the drafty farmhouse, had been shut off. The lights had been cut as well. It's a mid afternoon in the dead of winter, so the sun is already thinking about setting and I stood shivering in my room. I could see my breath.

This didn't feel like a home anymore. It was a cold and cruel replica of a room that had once made me feel safe. It was empty and devoid of it's soul. There were boxes scattered around, half full, books laying in piles unsorted. Clothes were everywhere, shoes dumped in the closet. I hit my wall at that moment. I knew my bed was around here somewhere, mostly disassembled. My vanity was one of the first things on the truck, and I'd packed it carefully and lovingly. The rest sat in that room and I wept because I knew I just didn't have the energy or the space to take it, but I didn't want to leave it.

I turned and walked out of the room. Whatever I left, I told myself, I could find again, when my life had changed and things had settled. My lesson in this was to let go, again, of what I'd rebuilt. It's painful even writing this, and the lump in my throat tells me the wounds are fresh enough still to bleed when poked.

But life can be funny. It can sucker punch you one minute, and then turn around and give you a miracle.

Life did change for me. I got engaged, and moved to Boston (the vanity made that trip too!). Slowly and surely I rebuilt what I'd lost. Most of the stuff I gave up is forgotten. I know I'll never get my actual sunflower dishes back, and I know the books I had aren't in print anymore. I don't know that I can even find them on sites like Amazon.com.

But I did find my bed. Out of curiosity I went looking and I found it, and to my surprise it costs half of what I originally paid. I thought about it for a while. Did I still want this bed? Is this just me feeling insecure? But I do still want it, and it's not borne out of anything but the desire to have back the things I miss the most.

This morning, I took the topic to my husband, the Mad Scientist. It's hard for me to ask for this, not because I think he'd have said no, but because it was something *I* bought, for *myself*, way back in the day. Obviously I don't make what I used to. I don't even make half of what I used to in a good week. But even knowing that if I asked for this bed, it would be as a gift from him, it doesn't devalue it. In fact, it makes it even more special because he does know what it means to me.

He knows what life has been for me. He knows how tough it got. And his desire to repair and rebuild with me is one of the reasons we work so well. He has given me back my bed. He's given me back this piece of me that I lost. For no other reason than because he loves me, and I don't think he knows how much sting he took out of the events of 2008 in this one act alone.

And I am doubly blessed.

Boston Adventures

I'm writing this for posterity, while the details are still fresh in my mind. For specific reasons, I will not reveal the identities of those involved, or certain details that are not my business. It's not my job to put people on blast, just record the events that have made this weekend possibly one of the weirdest I have ever survived.

It was Friday night, July 20th, 2012. The night starts out at a local watering hole that I will call the Tavern. Here are some logistics first:

The Tavern - A place roughly 2 minutes away from where I live.

W.C. - False initials of girl driver who is involved secondarily in the story. Lives about 40 minutes away.

C.B. - False initials of another girl who plays a big role. Lives approximately 2 minutes away from me. Rode to Tavern with W.C.

Other Girl - Third passenger in W.C.'s car. Also lives within a few blocks of me.

So, the evening starts as we meet at the Tavern. It's a good night, I've met this group once or twice through a friend who hired into my place of work at the same time. Drinks flow freely, but I keep myself sober. I had to work the next morning, and while I may have sipped here and there, I ate plenty of food and did not get even remotely "tipsy".

W.C., who gave a valiant effort to not get drunk, ended up losing that battle. We all do that from time to time, I know I have. As the night wore on, people began leaving. Other Girl left with a different set of people who were off to find food. Others decided to call it a night early. It's not that bizarre, not liek they footed us with a bill or anything. People leave off to go on their own quests. It happens.

So the bar closes, and it comes down to W.C. who is far too gone to drive, C.B., Matt and I outside the Tavern. C.B. wants to go to a neighboring town instead of home to her husband. W.C. wants to go home to her children. Neither are capable of driving, and C.B. is pressuring W.C. to take her to the next town over.

Here's what I *should* have done. Called a cab, called C.B.'s husband from W.C.'s phone (I did not have that number), or straight up talked to the cop who was sitting not far from the Tavern.

But no. Being the farm girl in the big city, I think that it can be handled like it is back home. You take the drunk friend to their house. If they sleep on their lawn well hey, they get to explain to the family why. But you can at least get them that far.

Both had to pee. And of course they don't let you do that unless you are a paying customer at any of the businesses, so we convinced them to get into our car, to get them back to our place (again, 2 minutes away), and have them sober up. Once a bit more grounded in reality, we could drive C.B. home on our way to take W.C. back to her car.

C.B. refuses to go up to the apartment. W.C. happily follows Matt up, not wanting to go to the next town over, and thankful she didn't have to drive in her state. C.B. gets out of the car and drops trou in the park. I stayed with her to make sure she didn't just walk off.

C.B. then decides she is missing Adam and wants to go home. At this point she is in the back seat, so I hop in the drivers seat. I should have known when I put it in drive and she asked where we were going that she hadn't requested to go home, she was just rambling drunk.

But I said I was taking her home. My GPS had the address locked in (thank you Facebook) and we set off. She calmed a bit when I said I was taking her to her husband. But not two blocks later, while I am going 30 to 35 mph, C.B. starts flipping out, kicking the seats and screaming. She then opens the door and tries to bail.

She stands on the sidewalk, screaming that I've kidnapped her and that she's trying to get away. I have stopped the car and a passerby asks what's going on. I tell him to please call the cops, and we try to figure out where we were (he wasn't from the area, and I was so turned around and bewildered that I couldn't think).

C.B. gets on the phone and continues loudly talking about how she's being kidnapped, and she stalks off behind a building, then reappears shortly after to smoke on one of the paved stairs.

Several police cars come flying by, lights flashing and stop to see us. Now I'm freaking out. I don't even have a parking ticket on my record. So to see them flying up, hands on weapons and handcuffs out, well... Let's just say if I could have, I would have sworn off all social activity ever, at that very moment.

I point out C.B., and while a couple of the officers go over to talk to her, another two ask me to get out of my car and go over to their cruiser. They ask me all sorts of questions about what's going on, and then administer a field sobriety test. Do you know that being scared out of your mind makes saying your ABC's about as easy as brain surgery?

They put the handcuffs away when I burst into tears, patting me on the shoulder and saying things like "It's alright, we just want to make sure you can drive home." I get it, that was their job. But probably a little tougher than they needed to be on someone with as much street cred as Milli Vanilli.

They got me back in my car, without even needing any of my i.d. or registrations, and about that time I see they got C.B. back on the sidewalk too. Two cruisers have already left, and they tell me I can go. I ask to make sure they will get her home, and when assured they will, I leave.

By the time I make the extremely short drive back to my place I'm in panic mode. Full fledged, ready for a straight jacket panic mode.

W.C. is still there with Matt, trying to figure out what happened in the time I was gone. W.C. by the way had sobered up a good deal by then, but I walked straight past them to the fire escape, chain smoked and called my sister.

Sober enough to drive, Matt took W.C. back to her car at the Tavern (she made it home perfectly safe), and then tried to calm me down. Jen did the heavy lifting, but even with all the assurances, I did not sleep. Now here it is Sunday and I'm finally able to piece everything together thoroughly, and make sense of things.

Again, I'm not here to put anyone on blast. It's not my job to put awful mistakes out there to be judged. But this happened to me, and I need to get it all together and out where I can see it, so that it stops buzzing around my head. The details, when written here, stop getting jumbled, I stop concentrating on the worst of the elements, and I start to see that it was just one weird, crazy night that doesn't have to be repeated again next week.

Shit happens. I have no idea how I could explain Attempted Vehicular Manslaughter and Kidnapping charges on my resume...

Waiting.

So, let's get it clear that I don't hate Boston. It's a beautiful city on a beautiful ocean and there are a thousand beautiful people I meet on a daily basis. The historic areas, the amazing towns like Salem, and the people I've come to love here are not to be discounted by this post.

But it's not home. It's never felt like home to me. I know it's got to be old sounding by now, but I've been robbed of my home. My parents lost the house I grew up in, my old neighborhood is unfamiliar, and sadly deteriorated. The halcyon days of my childhood feel like they were on another planet entirely.

The bitch of it is that I really, absolutely cannot go back to them. Not even to visit. I spent the better part of a day getting over a dream that we were forced to move back into the farmhouse and it dregged up so much buried stress that I nearly had a panic attack. Think about that for a second. A dream nearly caused me to hyperventilate. That's how much it hurts.

Back? Ok.

As a human being I feel like someone grabbed me by the ankles and shook me upside down until everything of worth was stripped from me, and all I had left was what couldn't be shaken out. It's why I go crazy around my sister. We have all the same flaws we used to have that get on each other's nerves, but even half a thought of losing her and I get a lump in my throat so bad I can barely breathe. We may fight, but there is no force strong enough to keep me mad at her.

So here I am, living this life for the past half decade or longer. I lost track, it happens. And marrying Matt has restored a lot of my losses. I have a home with him now, and have never, ever in my life felt more secure with another person. In every other relationship, I've had a foot out the door, or was too afraid to ever voice an opinion, let alone show I wasn't down with what was going on.

Matt's given me a home, and a place to belong. He's given me a safe, secure base that won't crumble no matter how bad the world tries to shake it. But for all the wonderfulness that is married life in the Murphy family, a big part of me is still missing.

I've tried very hard to recreate what I most need out here, but it tends to fizzle. It's no one's fault, it's just very hard to build a great something out of nothing in a very short time. I had to start all of my social interactions from scratch. All of them. I had to meet people at work, bite the bullet and hope they weren't crazy. What frame of reference did I have? I didn't go to school with their siblings, or know their cousin from that one weird year at camp. I got a couple of people worth keeping out of five years worth of trying. Considering how little I had to start with, and how hard it is even to make one new friend who ends up staying with you through life, I think that's pretty good.

But I desire more. I need more. I see the holidays like I used to have. Family and friends of the family, all gathered at a house in sweaters, talking about jobs and sports and life. I listened to my uncles talk about their childhoods, my aunts talked about raising the babies, and my cousins and I ran around like spazzes. We could do fuck all the rest of the year, but that Christmas reunion was the big draw. Everyone came like Littles to the Little house. It was like they just knew.

I work at Kohl's, no great accomplishment. But there are days where I see the doppleganger of someone in Pittsburgh and my heart drops. I'm so far away. I want to be able to be at work and see Chelle come through my line, or be out shopping and run into Kelly and Jason, or just call someone up and say "Hey, I have to go do ______, wanna come with?" I see them all around me, and yet when they turn in profile it's never them. It's like trying to grab smoke.

The isolation makes me feel like I'm going insane. And I don't blame the people out here. It's just they are younger, or city life is different, or I just have gotten so depressed about it that I don't want to make that effort out here anymore. I would give my left arm tonight to call someone and meet up at a diner. Have coffee. Laugh, cry, swap stories and just exist. But the people who'd answer that call are hundreds of miles away. I'm just tired, and weary, and ready to settle down. I've been through too much for my age, and I long for all that has been destroyed to be completely healed and rebuilt.

I can see the finish line, just 10 more months. Then this ready made group of people who have already made me a part of their lives will open, and the raw, tired parts of my soul will be able to rest, recover, and I can be a whole, complete person again.

But tonight, tonight I am just waiting. Waiting, and trying so very hard to be patient.

Apocalypse Now?

So, after watching The Colony, I've decided to put into effect a real contingency plan for a devastating apocalyptic event. I've also put together my ideal list of the people I would have. Just to put this up there, my plan will and does exist of getting to Northern Michigan, should anything major occur. I would, of course, be taking Matt with me.

My perfected trifecta would be my father for his ability to craft everything out of nothing and practical skill, my sister Jen for brawn and brains, and myself, because dammit, this is my survival plan!

On my trip to Michigan I would be collecting a few specific people to begin our new colony, based on what I've seen in the show. First off,

Ray P., Gerald B., DJ B., and Dale S. (and core family as necessary) due to them being complete powerhouses with practical knowledge.

Dino D. Jr, Josh P., and Dj D. for inventiveness and practical skill.

Laura R. for her knowledge of pharmaceuticals and a level of biology above basic. Also would be great to pair her with Janet S. for extra knowledge power.

Katie C. and Justin C. as the colony medics given their whole... being doctors and such.

Neil D. would be picked up for knowing the lay of the land and indigenous fauna, along with trapping skills.

Considering that each person would bring with them at least one other person if not more, I think that would give us a sizable colony to survive a world devastated to the point of no return. And if I named a significant other of yours, I factored them bringing you and any children!

If you do not fall into either the named, or the insinuated, I still offer an open invitation. If you can make it to Northern Michigan and survive the trek to our compound, you'll be welcomed openly. I think, all things considered, that's fair!

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All seriousness though folks, it's fun to play with the ideal situation, but in the end my plan consists of getting to my father, mother and sister Jen should anything happen. Matt may or may not come with me, I wouldn't dare make him choose his family or mine. I would only choose my own path solidly.

My dad is a technical genius and my sister has enough medical knowledge and brawn to give us a fighting chance. I'd just have to hope that I could come up with some use for my mother and myself. To be honest, if I weren't me, I wouldn't have made my own list!

What's your plan?