2,353

i know when my life started - july 23rd, 2003.

that was the first day that my baby and i talked. and we've spent literally thousands of hours talking since.

and then there were dates when i thought my life would begin.... the first was my birthday, 2008. that was our first target date for when we'd be together. shit happened. the next target was her birthday. more shit happened. then again it was my birthday, 2009. yet more shit.

so then the goal started being less grandiose and more down to earth - how about just -seeing- each other again? easy enough goal, right? first was a weekend in march this year. then memorial day. then the fourth. then her birthday.

YAY!!! we accomplished her birthday!!!!

other than that, mrs. lincoln, how was the theatre?

her birthday this year was in fact a major event/milestone. it was supposed to have been the groundbreaking event that freshened us, realigned us, put us on the fast track to finally being together.

not so much.

what it did was apparently quite the opposite. for her, at least. having had that one visit, her appetite is sated. where originally she saw visits, once they started, occuring every 2 or 3 weeks and continuing through possibly 6 visits until we were finally together... now it would seem that that single visit last week was more than enough for her. i should have known beforehand, because earlier last week, her preferred visit frequency went from "every 2-3 weeks" to "4 weeks or so". and this week, there's not even any future visits in the works.

what we do know is that -us- won't happen this year. and it won't happen in the first three months of next year.

mother fucking g-d damn it, i hate being right.

for the last few weeks, i felt my time in hell was drawing to a close, that my sentence was going to be commuted.

instead, my appeal was rejected. the govenor turned down the appeal for pardon.

the death sentence stands.

there are very, very few people who know when they will die. death row convicts, suiciders and Blade Runner replicants are pretty much it. sure, as the last few seconds of your life tick by you know it's gonna end -soon-... but as far as advance notice? hardly anyone gets that.

20091231235958. elapsed time: 51 years, 9 months, 7 days. 1,633,910,400 seconds.

18,910. eighteen thousand nine hundred and ten days.

2,353. two thousand three hundred and fifty three days of knowing her. 6.44 years. i've known and loved her for 12% of my life. roughly two hundred and three million seconds of knowing her. 203,323,018. give or take.

of those 2,353 days, i was fortunate enough to spend somewhere around 60 hours in her physical presence. 60 hours out of the 56,472 hours that we knew each other. 1/10th of 1% of our time was actually spent -together-.

799. seven hundred and ninety nine days since the -first- time my actions tore us apart and demolished her heart. and our future.

1,555. one thousand five hundred and fifty five days of knowing, loving, enjoying my baby. until the day i started destroying her and us.

1,555. one thousand five hundred and fifty five days trying to woo her, to win her heart, to pull her away from the man and the life she said she didn't want.

97. ninety seven days remaining. that just struck me as pretty fucking funny... for weeks i've been POSITIVE that there were less than 100 days until we were together. looks like the 100 days was in fact a valid timeframe.... just not for the event that i thought it would be...

and then?

an infinite number of days just like the last eighteen thousand nine hundred: days of not having her, not being with her. but at least the pain will stop.

i wonder if she'll remember me? in two or five or twenty years, do you think she'll remember me? or our time, even though we didn't spend it together? if she does remember me or our time, will it be a good memory? a bad memory? or just some distant thing that happened in the past?