Time and the hours, run through the roughest day...

It was about this time, six years ago, that I called John who, at the time, was my fiance and living here in South Korea. It was sometime between 10:21 and 10:50 am CT on Saturday, June 28, 2003. For John, it was already June 29th, just after 12:30 am. I'm sure he was not at all prepared for the phone call he got, a phone call from his very hysterical bride-to-be. He wasn't even able to understand a word I was saying and I wasn't able to talk to him for very long, the ambulance and the police were already arriving. It was amazing I was even able to dial the number since it was so long but months of calling him had made it all pretty automatic.

It was and still is, the worst day of my life. Nothing in the 22 and a half years before that day and nothing in the six years since that day has eclipsed the events that transpired that Saturday morning. I sincerely hope nothing ever does.

It's one of those events that ends up defining you and it definitely has defined me. Part of me, I think, is still stuck in that day. Sure, I have worked to move on. That's kind of how life goes. No matter what happens, there are still marriages and births and birthdays and all of those things that defines the life of a family. There's the day to day process of living that has to happen no matter what happens that may disrupt that. Life keeps happening and the world goes on living and somehow, you have to as well. But it wasn't easy, for a long time, it wasn't very easy to do at all.

And now, six years later, I'm here in South Korea, with both John and Natalie and it just seems to be so different compared to how things were six years ago. Sometimes it all seems surreal, that the events never really happened at all. When I talk to my mom, where she's at doesn't really enter my mind. There's sort of a denial about it all, like my brain just can't comprehend it all, doesn't really WANT to comprehend it all because to do so would somehow shatter it. I don't know. Sometimes, it tries to deal with what has happened through dreams but even those are confused. Many times, I will have dreams that I'm doing things with my mom, sometimes even my dad which is not at all possible nor will it ever be possible but it seems that they are right there, like everything is normal, like it all never really happened. It's like there are still parts of my brain that are just in total denial of all that has happened the last six years and doesn't want to acknowledge it ever happened so there's a sort of another dimension that is there within my mind and not only in that dimension are my parents in my life in full force but my seventh grade science teacher is alive and well and I talk to her often even wished her a belated happy birthday even though she's been dead now for almost a year and a half.

I know I'm not the only one with the dreams and mine are fairly tame compared to the dreams my sisters have had, especially my younger sister. Again, just amazing how our minds will take events that have happened and try to make sense of them when we're asleep. Amazing and kind of scary because the world it presents as the alternative is just crazy sometimes.

So another year passes and time goes on. Hopefully, someday, the day will pass without me taking note of it but that probably won't happen anytime soon. You just can't go through something like that and not have the date etched on your mind. Time may wear it down a little but to nothing? I don't know if that will ever be the case. I think John was hoping that bringing me here would help that but if anything, it only seemed to remind me even more because he was here when it happened. And it took me a long time to even forgive him for being here in the first place. That he wasn't with me when I needed him and wasn't able to come home for another three months was not easy for me to deal with at all. And for a long time, he took the brunt of my anger towards what happened because of it. I always had felt that things would have ended differently if he had just been back in the US with me or even if I had somehow been here with him. But to be honest, there's just no way of really knowing.