This year, 2018, marks the 10th anniversary of my wedding to W. As part of the celebration, I will be documenting our relationship from the proposal up to the wedding, and each year up to our 10th anniversary.
*Plays Chumbawamba’s Tubthumping*
“I get knocked down, when I get up again, you never gonna keep me down.”
2018: 2017 was @$!$%# Hold my beer.
Can we catch a break? Seriously?! January started with a bang: my sister got injured at work. Yay? In the middle of fighting for workers comp she got some sort of weird renal distress issue and was hospitalized for a few weeks. This was how Overcooked for the Nintendo Switch came into our lives. Her new bae took care of her like a true gentleman and scholar, which made us all breathe a sigh of relief. At least the dude knew what he was in for and hadn’t balked. As if the gods knew they were a match in heaven, TSA decided to grant them both transfers to sunny Tampa, Florida. Some light was visible at the end of her dark professional and personal life tunnel.
With her impending move came a few other surprises: about 2-3 of my closest friends decided to move back east, some even to Florida. 😭😭😭 I felt like a chapter of our lives was closing and we had no clue how to deal with all the change. These people were all life lines, even Zach sitters, and now we’d be force to make new friends and build new trust spheres. Thankfully, those friends who we still had in the area helped us channel some of the nervous energy. The MBA routine kept us busy and focused while we said “hasta luego”. Moving away from home is a hard choice, one that I don’t envy BUT totally necessary to make dreams come true under certain circumstances.
By a stroke of luck I had landed a job back in engineering at the same company. Sadly it wasn’t a good fit so I had to hustle to get into a more customer facing role. My manager sent me to some informational interviews which yielded results: a previous supervisor picked me up and even helped me get reclassified, aka promoted. The promotion was bittersweet because it came right after my mom refused chemo and radiation treatments. She had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, glioblastoma, which wasn’t the turn of events I was expecting when I made the MBA and engineering career commitments. Just when i thought life was going my way, luck turning in our favor, we get the air sucked out of us. The tears streaming down my sister’s face as we looked at the MRI were the only allowance we made before putting on our battle suits.
This was supposed to be my year, the countdown to the 10th wedding anniversary; the celebration of a lifetime palooza. Instead, it became the countdown to my mother’s demise, which was pre-empted by my grandmother’s departure in mid December. Mom made it to 63 but not in the best condition. China 2020 plans with her would have to be put on hold, indefinitely. So much loss. So much pain. Total and complete entropy, in its purest form. There is so much more to life than strife yet that is the only constant in mine. Emotionally I am spent. It is hard to look for joy and passion and excitement when our business is crisis.
We didn’t get our international tenth anniversary honeymoon, as we had hoped. We didn’t get to celebrate the holidays with family. We were stuck in this weirdly unique limbo when you don’t want to feel enough but kinda need to bleed just to know you are alive. Forget the 12 ft Christmas tree or the successful garage makeover. Forget the Goodreads challenge that didn’t even register enough books to be mediocre. Porch pirates, bad bosses, the never ending homework. Toss it all to the ditch and burn it. No good deed came without its nasty, horrifying counterpart this year.
Good riddance 2018! I hope you had the time of your life…
Up next, Marriage: 10th Year. Here We Go! 🎈🎉🎊🥂🍾💪💝🍻🎄🎁🖖
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Mrs. Enginerd - Nerd Whisperer 