And then I found myself standing at the crossroads...

In the beginning, when he first passes away, you think to yourself, "I'll never be able to love someone again; not this way." And you continue to think that every single day...every waking moment...every sleeping second....you just feel it deep in your gut that never again will you be able to love someone or ever feel that sort of closeness to another man ever again. And just the smallest thought of even trying to explore that idea makes your stomach wrench, your heart is weighed down with lead, and it makes your skin crawl. You become overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, betrayal, disloyalty... you even begin doubting your own self; putting yourself on trial and demanding an explanation for, "If you loved him so much, if he was so special to you, then how can you even dare to think about loving another person like that???" Once your inner-lawyer stops interrogating you, you step down from the stand blanketed with emotions of eternal loneliness and hopelessness. You find yourself just counting the days and the minutes down to your sweet death. You find yourself looking for someone to mercifully put you out of your misery, so that you can finally reach that one moment where you can be with him once again. And you wait...and wait...and wait.

You begin meeting new people as life carries on. Men start recognizing that you're now single, and some even start making their interest in you more obvious. You pull away, because you know that these guys will never be able to love you the same way as he did. You desire to be touched, held, caressed, kissed, and loved again with the same affection, but yet you resist all of their advances and push them away. The idea of them coming too close to you makes you sick and full of guilt & agony, and all you desire is to have the one man that you can no longer mortally have.

Every day is the same process....the same painful reminder that you are alone, and he is gone. Memories of what your life once was, and is no more, now haunt your every thought. It feels as if there is no escape and that this is your reality for the rest of your life until mercy is gifted to you. And without any warning or knowledge, something subtly changes, but you don't realize it yet.

You make a new friend who's unlike anyone else you've encountered. There's no pressure; he's not trying to pursue anything with you, and you feel non-threatened and safe. Your instinct isn't there to push or pull away; even the slightest thought of doing so eludes you, but you don't realize it at the time. He offers you a safe place to talk and open up; he encourages you to speak about your anguish inside and gently helps you to begin working on letting some of the pain out. He is understanding & respectful to the memory of the man you once devoted your life to. He even offers to quietly sit by your side during those moments when you crawl into that dark, lonely cave to hide from the chaos of the world surrounding you.

Before you know it, when someone asks you, "How are you doing?", you are startled when you hear yourself genuinely respond with, "I'm doing good." I'm doing good??? Who said that?! It makes you stop dead in your tracks and begin to evaluate what's going on here. Since his death, you have perfected your dual personality, presenting everyone with a facade on the outside of you smiling, joking, and laughing; meanwhile, you are sad, broken, and weeping on the inside at those very same moments. It's like dancing the Tango with your own self between your dual personalities. So to find yourself in the position that your emotions on the outside are actually reflecting the emotions on the inside once again...it's a breakthrough! And once this realization that the "impossible" has occurred, it makes you wonder.....what other impossibilities can be achieved? Maybe experiencing happiness & love with another man isn't such an impossibility. And you find yourself startled once again, because this time, that thought of hopefulness didn't make your stomach wrench. You felt............okay.



So, here I now stand. I find myself at a crossroads...an intersection between the road where I came from, my former beautiful life with Alfonso, and I am now faced with taking a new road to create a new life to be filled with new, beautiful experiences. As each new day presents itself, I keep taking another step forward down this unfamiliar road, uncertain of what lies ahead, but I know in my heart that it's what I need to do to live. Because staying on that other road will never get me anywhere; I'll only exist, and not really be alive, if I wait on the road that I'm so familiar with...death will eventually find me sitting there alone and miserable.

Sometimes it is so hard to keep walking forward, and it's a struggle to try and not look back. There are moments that I want to run back to that road, and anchor myself tightly down to it. But as reality has it, there's nothing left there for me. I honestly feel that Alfonso is the one responsible for guiding me to this crossroad; this particular crossroad that intersects with the road of this new special man that's come into my life. Sure, it may sound crazy, but I feel it with so much certainty that I don't feel it necessary to have to justify it to anyone else, and that in itself says a lot to me.

I don't know what lies ahead for my emotions, but I finally feel as if I'm beginning to heal. I can feel as the wounds begin to slowly & gradually close (though they have a long way to go). I find that I am beginning to feel happy again and hopeful. I feel safe & protected once again. When I look around me, all that had turned grey, color is now flourishing once more. There's beauty replenished in the starry night, in a child's laugh, in a bird's song, in a babbling brook. I no longer cringe in terror when it comes to thinking about the future. I actually have rediscovered the will to live...to live life to its fullest...to be alive......... and I contribute and give many thanks to "M" for being that person to help me rediscover all of this and to find myself again.

One of Alfonso's important lessons that he continuously repeated to not just me, but to all those that he loved...."Life is about living; live it with quality; maximize it; experience as much of it as you can." I'm certain that it makes him feel happy to know that his advice did not fall on deaf ears. It was ALWAYS so important to him that with every life that he touched, that he was able to leave something positive behind to help enhance the life of that person. I can't tell you how many times I heard him say that over the years. And as he watches over me, I know that he's proud of me for taking his advice and actually listening to him for once...lol. It used to frustrate him to no end, because he felt as if I never took his advice. He would tell me the most efficient way of handling a situation, and I would always have to go and do it the hard way. It aggravated him so badly...lol. In his exact words, "How come you have to hear it from somebody else in order to believe it? I tell you the same exact thing, and you fight against my every single word. Why do you need to be so necia?!" Well, it's not that I had to hear it from somebody else, and it's not that I didn't believe him or deliberately not want to take his advice. Actually, just like when he would ask me, I still don't have a concrete answer to that............I'm sorry, mi latoso guapo; I never meant to be so 'necia'.

But no time like the present, right? I'm following his advice and am moving forward and will live life to its fullest. As difficult as it may be sometimes, and as much as I miss him, there's only one direction I can go if I want to do more than just exist. So as the day seems to come to an end with the sun setting and the starry night blanketing us, there is always a new day right around the corner. A fresh start. A day full of brand new potentials and possibilities. And we get this new opportunity every single day. New experiences wait ahead if I just keep moving forward.

Sunset from the west view of our house in California
Thanks to both Alfonso and "M", I can see the beauty & colors in this once again. :-)