Lessons

Ten years, man.

Fuck.

I was driving to work a few weeks ago when it hit me, out of nowhere.

Ten years since the paramedics made a huge fucking mess in the bedroom, ten years since I got to know the ICU at Boston Medical Center better than anyone who wasn't paid to be there should know it, ten years since I learned what a panic attack felt like.

I learned other things, too, like how to pack up someone else's whole life, and how to chain-smoke and keep a steady drunk on without drawing attention to my little coping mechanism, and how to cry in public without giving a shit who was staring. Oh, and how major catastrophic global events that would drastically change the course of your nation's history didn't really matter to you when you were watching them from your comatose boyfriend's hospital room.

I could've gone without knowing those things. I think my intellectual capacities could take the loss of those little pearls of wisdom, and be just fine without them, thanks.

These anniversaries always poke at me. I'm cranky every year in late August and I don't know why, until I remember. "Oh. Yeah, that."

This one isn't poking at me, it's socking me in the gut.

I've said it before. We were not soulmates, and it was a hot mess of a relationship, doomed to implode one way or another. I don't wish we were still together. But damn, I wish he was still in this world.