It was about 3:30 in the morning after my husband and I had our first dinner party at our first house. He woke up and didn't feel right, we called an ambulance quickly and that saved his life. Thirty-one, and a heart attack - a big one.

This year I've been told more than once that he'd die, I've had three men claim they alone could save him, I've had the insurance company tell us it would be a quarter of a million - up front - to do it.

Husband has moved half way down the state to wait for a new heart. He's been there six months now, it is the only alternative that doesn't cost a quarter of a million up front.

Husband is going to be on television, he was the second person to go home on this particular life support device, they videotaped him being stared at in a grocery store because he looks funny to people walking past, like he doesn't have enough on his plate without rubbernecks.

I can now keep up with cardiac conversations, I can name the drugs that will be used when {if} his transplant shows up, he and I have said everything that you put off because there is always time.

Last night we watched a chain reaction on tv. We discussed the ways that it was acceptable for him to contact me from the great beyond {ventriloquist dummies and creepy phone calls are bad, talking baby dolls are fine}. It was the best laugh I've had in a long time.

Heather {furtekh@yahoo.com}  1 Jan 2002

In March, we settled on a bakery after much delicious searching!

We took stock of our finances, and watch our company begin to stumble.

I bought Turbo Tax for the first time and did my taxes online. A glorious thing!

We found a DJ.

We were almost prepared.

I joined a CounterStrike Clan for the first time, and proceeded to get my rear end kicked in. It was a ton of fun, staying late at work and having clan parties under spot halogens, with no cubes, and pizza and beer.

My tulips began to bloom.

I took a chance.

One {one@absquatulate.com}  8 Jan 2002

The addage says it's "In like a lion and out like a lamb" but for me, it was nothing but feline. March 3rd was supposed to be an important anniversary with the boy i was with. We had an interesting relationship...I would sleep with other people and all i had to do was tell him all about it. It was only fair that i would tell him he could sleep with others too. It seems that he was just a lot more picky than i was about bed mates (at the time). To this day, i truly think i would't have felt half so betrayed by him if it had only been about sex when the new girl came into our relationship. I remember noticing and asking him one night what he was upset about. "I fell in love with someone else". A phrase i hope i never hear again and one i won't soon forget. Who i had thought was a cute little lesbian addition to the relationship turned out to be the person he would marry later that year. While i was feeling broken and in need of mending, i met the perfect people to help me heal myself. While drinking coffee a week before the breakup, my ex and i were unassumingly having a conversation with a friend when the boy at the table next to us asked if we knew the equation for finding the circumfrance of a circle. I had no idea then that my answer of pi r squared would lead to crazy sex up against the wall in his parents house and lasting friendship only a short time later. In short, this boy and his two friends were my salvation. I fell hard in love with the most hacker of all the computer nerds i've known and we're currently in the midst of planning our trip to Australia come this march. All's well that ends well they say, but i have a feeling this tale is far from over.

Ash {violentpunkgrl@aol.com}  21 Jan 2002

New York can eat you alive. March was the month it put on the lobster bib, I had no idea it was about to consume me.

I had a great job in advertising, an apartment, a recently blown off boyfriend and no debt. March 18 I wound up in a dive bar to drink a cranberry tonic or two so that my friend, the new bartender, could prove he could bring in a crowd. I was the only one that showed up, so my vodka cran turned in to three. Or four.

Who knows how these things happen. I wound up at three in the morning at a Wall Street loft in a bubble bath on ecstacy with a man I had never met. I wound up calling in sick to work for two days straight. That is all I remember. For seven weeks. I really don't know how these things happen.

Four months later I would be living in Alaska painting warehouses in the midnight sun. Advertising job gone. Jimmy Choos gone. New York City address gone. Boy on ecstacy long gone. Lobster bib on New York's belly catching the remains of someone else's life story. Who knows how these things happen?

bean  3 Feb 2005

{ add your experience }