I have been dreading this week for a while. Within the span of three days are two very emotional anniversaries for me that, if I am being honest (and why shouldn't I be, no one is reading this!), I still have not fully processed. The first comes on Wednesday, the third anniversary of the day Pumpkin almost died. I replay that day in my head a lot when a bite I did not even know she must have received days before got infected, abscessed and almost killed her. I replay her running away from the house, my frantic attempts to find her, her coming back to the house and my chasing her around to get her in the cat carrier even as she was dripping blood on the floor, her clawing my arm so deeply the scar took ten months to heal, and finally getting her to CARES, where the saints .. yes SAINTS who work there saved her. I think about getting home past 1 a.m. and not knowing if I was going to be able to treat her, the cone around her neck (that would stay on for three weeks). The second surgery she had to have the following Saturday because the stitches that ran the entire length of her right hind leg were splitting open because I didn't get her situated on the floor in the bedroom she was in. The constant pain I know she endured, the emotional toll it took on me. It was awful. Psychically scarring. It brought into stark relief how much I loved her and it still haunts me.
The other anniversary is Friday, the sixth anniversary of meeting Special Lady Friend. This year is particularly painful because it is not just the anniversary of the date, but the day of the week. I can replay that entire day - that entire weekend - in my head, the first words she ever said to me after I introduced myself ("someone from your office could have told us what this fucking meeting was about" <swoon>), the phone call I made late in the afternoon after we met, the five hours we spent at a bar talking that night, the email I sent when I got home telling her what a great time I had, the Saturday we spent emailing back and forth, the date we went on Sunday night (Winberie's) what she ordered there (salmon on a cedar plank), and at the Bent Spoon (pistachio ice cream), and how we kissed in the front seat of her car, and my being stunned I had met this incredible person. I have replayed those 72 hours (give or take), over and over, hundreds of times since it happened. As it slips further into the past and my inability to find someone since, it just solidifies in my head that she was the last person I will love. It is not great.
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