So it's clich, but 2003 for me really was "the best of times... the worst of times."
The worst thing that has ever happened to me, the death of my father, occurred this past year. In fact, I suspect I have yet to plumb the depths of what that really means for me. Sometimes it seems that I've pushed that event to a corner of my mind, still a little numb and unbelieving. For example, I often find myself speaking of him in the present tense, and having to stop and correct myself. At other times, though, the reality, its import and my grief all hit me squarely, and become almost palpable in their physical impact, nearly making me gasp.
Yet 2003 was the year I also met Jeff, who provided an unexpected and unexpectedly fresh new beginning to what I, alone at 40, had begun to think was moribund, my romantic life and ability to love or be loved. In a relatively short six months, I've come to care for him as deeply as anyone I've loved before, yet with what feels--at least to me--like a more relaxed and less frantic, more interdependent and less codependent experience than (many of) my previous relationships. I'm trying to live with him and, I hope, reasonably successfully so, according to the philosophy of two songs, one from each of two favorite musicals to which he introduced me, "No Day But Today" from Rent and "For Now" from Avenue Q, the latter a truly hopeful song even as it notes that the good in life, no less than the bad, is transitory.
