Scared to Death!

What a couple of weeks! I want to apologize for not being around – not as though you’ve all been waiting for me like a sick buncha’ cattle waiting to get slaughtered, but there’s been such weird and distracting things happening lately. First it started off with a real bang. Madelene went off to work the same time as usual, and after she leaves, I start getting ready for my day. After a few hours I’m sitting in my office working and I noticed that Madelene’s car is still in the parking lot. Madelene never, ever comes home for lunch or for any other reason. She’s quite a predictable peapod.

I keep looking outside, staring at her car. I know it’s her car because she has dealer plates on it, being that she’s a car salesperson – aka shark. Now, it’s noontime and I’m thinking maybe the Spanish lady next door is also a car salesperson? With the same car? With the same dealer plates? Naw…

I look even harder. There’s a head in the car…not moving. I see the blue shirt reflecting off the driver’s window. I run to get my binoculars. Staring through the lens, she was in the car and not moving.

“OH shit!!!”

I didn’t know what to do first. Thoughts flickered through my mind about Madelene’s co-worker. He had died in his car of a heart attack. They found him hours later lying on his steering wheel. The dealership that they both had worked for was very stressful. They’re a bunch of hard asses that never give anybody a break. It’s competitive and sometimes quite demeaning. Her manager, who she still butts heads with interrogates everyone and makes his employees feel like crap. Anyway, in my mind, I’m thinking the same thing happened to her: she had a heart attack right in her car before even pulling out of the driveway.

I called mom.

Bad idea.

I’m hyperventilating at this point. “MA! I-I-I-I think M-M-M-Mad’s sick in the car or something!” I’m crying my eyes out screaming as though she has already entered the pearly gates of heaven. I kept thinking: how the hell am I gonna go down there and open that car door to only see the most traumatizing thing of my whole entire life???

I’m racing over into the closet to get my sneakers on. I can’t even tie them. My hands are shaking. My mom’s telling me to calm down and that it’s probably someone else and I’m mistaking it for Madelene.

No.

It was her.

As soon as I couldn’t bear anymore, I see Madelene get out of the car after 10 minutes. I stared. She grabbed her briefcase and slammed her car door as though she was pissed of at the world. I knew she had a fight with that idiot boss of hers and finally just left him hanging. I was so relieved she was walking- that I passed right out.

When Madelene entered the apartment, she found me passed out on the bed. Never mind the loss of her job – she was now focused on her sick girlfriend. When I woke up, I couldn’t stop crying for another 5 hours. The mere thought pained my heart so much. Madelene stared at me and said, “Now I know you really love me.”

My heart never raced so hard in my entire life.

On top of that, during a snowstorm the other night, our pipes busted and our gas tank was about to explode due to a lack of water cooling off the tank, as the gas company warned us when they came to check it out. They turned all of our heat off and got a few plumbers working on it because it may have blown up the entire building. As our heat was off, we made a fire. Instead of going to a hotel for the night, I told Mad we could sleep near the fire under the blankets. Not even 30 minutes after I said that, our heat was back on and everything was safe again. We had neighbors, plumbers, gas company guys and even my landlord in our apartment, because we were the only tenants with wood to burn.

Anyway, things are back to status quo: Mad got her job back (different dealership), I’m relieved she’s still alive, as well as relieved that we’re not in each other’s hair so much and our daily rituals are back on track. Due to the stress and anxiety, I’ve gotten myself into quite the workout routine. I’ve been exercising every single day for about an hour or two and realizing life’s too short to waste it on the small stuff.

Sometimes, God puts circumstances in our lives to make us realize important lessons. What I’ve learned through all this is, no matter what life slaps us with, we work as a team and not against each other. We help, encourage and reassure one another that our love is just as strong as day one – if not stronger. When something tests your relationship to extremes, you can determine the true character of someone by the worst circumstances.

Also, things could be worse!!!