Time flies...

Which is apparently why I haven't updated anything here in so long.  There's just so much going on..

The boy has turned 12, and I'm sad for so many reasons.  His Dad dropped off some pics from years ago when the boy was only about 7 months old and I really miss those days. I'm happy that he's grown into a thoughtful, caring and sensitive young man, but I miss my baby boy.

In other news...did some Christmas shopping with the mom today over in the US, had a good time and got a decent amount of stuff for the kids. This, at least, makes me happy.

The bestie took me to my Dr's appt last week and we got to talking about the stupid men in our lives. I was telling her my thoughts and feelings of D and how I just didn't understand why the conversations suddenly stopped months and months ago with no reason. How, in one way, it was easier for me to move on with life after a few months went by of not talking to him, but in another way, how much more it made me miss him.  I've spent the last better part of a year wondering if he was ok, how things were going, was he hurt, was he dead, just where the hell was he.  Emails to both addresses were bounced back as non existent, no replies to msn/yahoo messages.  I wasn't allowed to text him once he got with his current gf, so I didn't even have his number anymore.  Even if he wasn't talking to me, I at least wanted to know he was ok.

About 15 minutes ago I got this sudden urge to sign into msn and yahoo, something I haven't done in quite some time unless requested to by someone for a few mins here and there.  As msn is signing in and freezing, I had a fleeting thought about seeing his name pop up as if he had left me an offline message.  Haha fat chance, right?  Wrong.

I see a window show up at the bottom of my screen with his name on it.  And then everything freezes. And I'm panicking, absolutely *needing* to see this message.

So I wait extremely impatiently for msn to stop being a douchebag, and read the messages.  Nothing major, just that he's home sometimes (I assume he means due to travelling for work) and seeing how things are and how he's signed in here and there to see if I'm online, and haven't been...said he'd check later, which he did, and then sent me messages the next few days to see if I was here.  And I wasn't.  Why?  Because I haven't heard from him in probably close to 8 months or so...I had no other reason to log on.

So I left him a message back saying I've tried getting ahold of him, with no luck and that I'd try to sign in more often.

And now...all of these feelings have flooded back into me. I want to grin like a maniac because I know he's ok. I want to jump around with happiness because he messaged me.  But, mostly I want to cry.  I don't even know if I can explain *why* I want to cry.  I want to cry because I stupidly still have hopes that he'll come to his senses.  I want to cry because after months and years of learning to heal and be without him, I feel like my heart has been shattered all over again.  I want to cry because I miss him with so much of myself that it becomes exhausting.

I want to cry because he's not here, and because I know he never will be. I want to cry, remembering all the amazing times that we *did* have together. And I want to cry because there won't be more of them.

As I sit here, writing this...I can't help but glance to my right where one of our fortunes is on my wall from years ago. I don't know if I've told this story, but we had gone for a fancy dinner at the Mandarin. We were at a 4 person table, but instead of sitting across from each other, were sitting sort of beside each other.  At the end of dinner, we got our fortune cookies.  We had the same one.  'Stop searching.  Forever happiness is just next to you'

We laughed about it at first, thinking it was funny and awesome all at the same time.  We *were* next to one another.  He ran around looking at other peoples tables to see if anyone else had that fortune, like maybe a big batch came in and were all the same.  None of the other ones were the same, to ours or anyone else's that he checked.  I still think it meant something.  I used to keep them both in my wallet, until one got ripped and had to be thrown out, so I took the other one out, just a couple of weeks ago and put it on the wall by my desk.  Can't bring myself to get rid of it.

I know, in my head, that things are long since done.  My heart, however, refuses to catch up and holds on to this shimmery string of hope for the future. Silly heart.