Thank you all for your kind words and support.
I'm going through a very tough time right now, so I probably won't spend much time here. At the moment, I feel bifurcated. I keep having this little dialog in my head, things I would like to tell her. Things I would have wanted her to know. Important things, but then I remember that she is gone, and that she will never ever know. It just hurts so bad I don't know what to do with myself
What really gets me, and this is something that I never expected, how important our shared experiences and memories are. We had some great times together. We traveled together and we have worked together. We went exploring old abandoned houses and underground power sub-stations. We lay an open field on our backs wearing snow mobile suits in the winter, looking up at the starry sky, trying to see satellites, the milky way and shooting stars (we saw a really nice one). One day the summer after Noey made a rocket that we went and sent up from that very same field. The rocket went off course, and we worried that it might start a fire (it didn't).
I was so looking forward to a time in the future when we would reminisce about these things. The memories I have of these things would have been mirrored and anchored in the external world, but now.....they are just memories in my head, and I can't relive the memories with her. Some of these memories are probably the best ones of my life, but now that she is gone we will never get to relive them together. The memories are my cargo, and now I'm a lonely ship lost at sea, never to see port again. It's just so sad.
I think my most favorite moment though was the night she kissed me for the first time. I had fallen madly in love with her a couple of months earlier while we were doing video chats. We would talk for hours every day, and then one day on the radio, I heard the song Stranded by Lutricia McNeil, and while listening to the lyrics it struck me as a bolt of lightning that I was in love with her. It was the strange thing as I wasn't into women. But she was something special. One of a kind (she really was. I've never met anyone like her before. She has just as much moxy and character as her writings in this forum). I was fearful I'd scare her away if I told her, so I was willing to keep my mouth shut for the sake of our friendship. Then she came to spend the summer. She would sleep in my bed with me, and every night before bedtime she'd give me these wonderful hugs. Then one night, she kissed me and told me she loved me. I silently cried that night while listening to her breath in her sleep. It was the best moment of my life. I don't know what I'll do without her.
Here is a picture of me and her walking along a beach in Spain. I had just tossed my gopro while doing a burst shot. I thought I'd share this photo of us together. We are not recognizable, obviously, but that's just the way it's got to be. But never the less, it's a picture of the two of us together on vacation (me on the left and Noey on the right)
