moving on, or trying to

I'm in a strange mood tonight. Actually, I've been in a strange mood all week.

Sometimes I think this is a beautiful world God has graced us with and other times I just feel the emptiness all around me where Dave belongs. It's part of the grieving process, I guess.

It seems the more I take steps to move forward in my life the way Dave would have wanted me to, the more I feel his absence. I'm doing a lot better than I was back in August, of course, although summer is going to be here again too soon and I don't want to deal with the first birthday I can't celebrate and the first of my birthdays without him... and the first anniversary of his death.

Anyway, this morose post came about because I have a date tomorrow. I met this guy on eharmony and I mae the obligiatory first call to see if I wanted to take it beyond e-mail. I thought we'd just talk for a few minutes but we ended up talking for an hour, about teaching mostly, because he's a teacher too, but also about other things. It reminded me of the way I used to stay up all night taking to Dave, which is one of the things I miss most about him.

So tomorrow I'm going to meet him at Applebee's after church. I'm excited and scared and nervous, and I realized suddenly that I'm scared that things might actually work out for me.

I don't know where that fear comes from. It's the JD in me, I guess. But I know that part of it is feeling like if I move on with my life, I leave Dave's memory behind. Which is, of course, BS. He would have wanted me to move on. And I will always have his memory.

I wrote the first chapter of Chasing Ghosts last week. The more I write, the more I become aware that it's about a woman who wants to turn back time, who's afraid of the future, of time moving on. It's partly because her husband's died, but it's more than that... it's a general attitude towards life.

I don't want to be like her but I am writing her story.

I put a quote from the Bible at the beginning:

When the sun rose, Lot went into Zoar...
but his wife looked behind her, and was turned into a pillar of salt.

and a dedication

FOR DAVID
Your memory lives on in me

I'm excited about this project, although it's slow going. I'm still working on my old novel, too. I want to finish revising it and then get it professionally edited. Then I'll write a proposal and try to get it published.


Not much else to say. Last night they showed the episode of Scrubs where JD and Elliot hook up and then quickly break up. I could just hear Dave saying, "You see why it's better just to be friends?"

1:30 left of work before I can go home and go to bed. I'm tired.