9/8/2004 08:32:34 AM|||Chench|||So it’s early on in my separation. A Sunday I believe and I just dropped off Katherine at her Mom’s. I was miserable. I’m sitting at the bar by myself at B&B and the ex calls. Without going into the conversation, after that call I was more miserable so, back to the bar. Then, she calls again. By this time I wanted to crawl under a rock. I was more depressed at that moment than I’ve ever been in my life and more than I can imagine being again. I went back to the bar and I was trying to decide whether I was going to get hammered or do something else that would have been at least as stupid and in she walks. I had met her a few weeks previously when I had dinner with Laura and Christine joined us for a bit. Anyway, she talks to Laura for a minute and then they come over together. She walks up to me and says, “Hey, are you good at putting things together?” “Um, I guess.” I said. She says, “Listen, I live right across the street and I’ve got this workout bench that I’m having trouble putting together. I was wondering if you could give me a hand putting it together and I’m not sleeping with you.” “Well,” I said. “I’ll take a coke.” In an instant I had forgotten my problems at least for a short while. I was immediately out of my depression. I went from feeling like the lowest form of life on this planet, someone that no one would ever consider speaking to again to feeling like a person again. I was completely convinced I was going to crawl into a hole and disappear and never have anyone in my life again. No friends, no lovers, no nothing and then a smile and a joke changed my life right then and there. It was a life changing moment for me.

We became fast friends. Tuesday nights at B&B became not just regular, but required. Things change of course though. I fell in love, she got married and then pregnant and is now a mommy to a beautiful little girl. We don’t see each other as much as we should, but I think about that moment in my life a lot. Always will.

I’ve told this story to a few people. From my point of view, no one can really appreciate it the way I do. No one knows how I was feeling at that moment before Christine came in and the moment after she said what she said. That’s ok. I do.


|||109464711464329932|||Ooh, you opened up the door. Ya made my life once more.