V-Day / Love Day

I bet the one person who reads this wonders how Valentine's Day went for me.

Well, let's say it started off rough.  Leeland had a super tough night and awoke almost every hour to cry. I eventually took him to the basement room so that we wouldn't wake up Dahlia.  Of course, Dahlia arose just after 6:00, couldn't find me, and almost called 911.  I heard her scampering and got upstairs soon enough to prevent that.  That was the start of the day.

Let's just say I didn't get enough sleep.  After the kids ate, I packed them up and brought them to my mom and dad's place.  That was great.  They had the kids for the rest of the day.  During the regular daytime hours, Barb and Kelly came over and we purged my house.  Yesterday was the garage and today was the basement and Leeland's room. They are so helpful and decisive about helping me decide what to throw out.  In the end, the basement looks really good. I am so thankful to them, and yet they are so happy to be helping me do what I need to do to move to Rainbow Falls.

The harder part came after they left.  Non-coincidentally, my new CD from Danah-Lee showed up in the mail today.  Happy Valentine's to me.  So around 4:00, I sat down to listen to the album and it started to speak to my heart.  Not only the lyrics, but Danah's voice is just the right kind of beautiful.  She could have been singing jibberish, and her voice would have touched that sadness in my soul.  Double lucky, her lyrics are spot on and closely mirror the thoughts and feelings I was having today.  Feelings of sorrow, losteness, regret, longing, suffering.  Danah bares her heart and soul in her 7 tracks and I listened to them over and over. As I listened, I cried. The music paired with some important reminders of my love with Melissa led to a sorrowful Valentine's.

We shared some major love.  Melissa trusted me with the deepest insecurities she had.  She allowed herself to be vulnerable.  I in turn was vulnerable with her and our love grew and was rewarded for that.  I missed that love so much today.  Having one of the lyrics in the songs repeat "Please come home" over and over really echoed my heart.  I wanted Melissa to come home.  I wanted to rewind and go back to those special moments that I had with her and got to share in because I was her husband and because she loved me, I got to see her flourish and grow and thrive. She got to see me and help face my insecurities as well. This was the way love was meant to be shared between man and wife. We weren't perfect by any stretch, but we did the love thing pretty right.

My personality is adaptive and so I'm sure to some it has seemed like I am strong and capable in this circumstance.  The truth is that I just cope well with change. When the reality of Melissa hits me in the chest again, it changes me.  I need to experience that sorrow.  Most of the time I am doing ok, but every once in a while, that deep sorrow comes and embraces me and I just grieve.  I want to thank Danah and her music for helping facilitate my evening of pain, and for being willing to express those feelings with her voice. I also want to thank Melissa for investing so much into me.

At the end of the night, a friend checked in on me to see if I was doing ok.  That was appreciated and undeserved.  Some of my friends are just solid and have hearts of gold.  I feel lucky to have friends like that who can just be with me and feel with me.  Anyway, I hope you had a good day and Happy Valentine's Day.