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By Misti Date: 2005 Feb 18 Comment on this Work [[2005.02.18.09.47.11015]] |
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So yesterday at 6:29 p.m. I turned 32 years old. I told my boyfriend it's funny...a year ago he was just a guy I knew at work. We were working in the offline support department for T-Mobile. We were on the night shift. On my birthday last year I handed a camera to a girl I liked and asked her to take my picture because I had just turned 31. Michael turned around at his desk and said Happy Birthday. He asked how old I was. I said,"31 flavors" and he laughed. I was married at the time...pretty unhappily. Once I became friends with Michael and started working on his cable access show ("Deface The Nation") I knew that I was going to have to leave my husband. So I did. Haven't been on antidepressants since. It wasn't my ex's fault I was depressed....I'd been depressed all my life....but being married to a man I didn't truly love didn't exactly help much. I came alive last year. It's been a hard year but a good year in many ways. Mostly because of Michael, the man I will marry. When we first got together we drank a lot, danced a lot, sang a lot of karaoke, had a lot of hot sex. I left Michael after three months (moved to Texas temporarily, lived with various family members) because I was out of my head. I'd just left a difficult marriage and was very insecure and not used to being on my own. I basically freaked out. I knew I loved Michael but I needed some time alone. Still, we talked on the phone all the time and sent each other love letters. I returned to Michael in August. That is when his health began to deteriorate. He has avascular necrosis=dead veins in his thighs. He had core decompression surgery in December and will have his right hip replaced in June. We're pursuing a lawsuit because we feel that the doctors could have prevented the disease getting to this stage. The medical industry in New Mexico is a big fat unfunny joke. Money cannot compensate what we have lost but it would help. Michael has been in a wheelchair since November. The stress of that combined with the stress of barely scrapping by has just about killed us. There are brighter days ahead. I know this. I have to believe this or I'll fall apart. We love each other. We found each other too late. Then again, if we had met when I was a 20 year old virgin who still believed in God and Michael was a 28 year old hedonist who believed in Nigel Pennick, it might not have worked. I would have been awestruck but he would have thought I was a pretty, useless, empty vessel and he would not have had the patience to fill me, most likely. Michael encouraged me to get my chapbook published. I dedicated it to him. Next we'll publish his Tales From the Tweakside, his stories of life in San Francisco and Oakland. The man has lived a full life. |