“There’s a lot of things you need to get across this universe. Warp drive… wormhole refractors… You know the thing you need most of all? You need a hand to hold.” -The Doctor, Doctor Who

By October, I had become complacent in my wearing of my engagement ring. I was not sure if our relationship would weather the storms that I saw on the horizon, but I also didn’t really know what to do about it. We were engaged now so we might as well just stay that way since I suck with confrontation.

Around this time, Shane started working stocking shelves at the Dollar Tree at night. We became nocturnal for several months, living by his work schedule since I was still just a housewife. I went to work with him a few times, hanging out in the parking lot and his car until the short breaks he would get: two fifteen minute breaks and one half hour, that was the highlight of my lonely days.

I also began reading all of his favorite books on the days when I didn’t accompany him to work. I wanted to figure him out because then I might figure us out. I read all the Lord of The Ring books, The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy and an autobiography of wrestling star, Bret Hart. It was like picking Shane’s brain and finding out what made him tick. I must admit that as a student of psychology, I found his inner world fascinatingly complex. That might have been part of the reason I stayed with him through all the difficulties we faced.

Shane was having some trouble adjusting to his work schedule though. His depression was getting the best of him and we kept having screaming one-sided arguments where he would tell me that he was a loser and he just wanted to go down to Florida because he didn’t know how he would support himself on Long Island. He feared he was going to run out of money and lose the family house that he had inherited. In his mind, he would have rather gone down to Florida than have the banks come and steal the house from him.

I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just support each other, together against the world instead of him running off to some foreign state without me. Whenever he got upset, it was always survival of the fittest, and if he had to cut off his own arm to survive, he would do it. If he had to hurt me in the process, he would still make sure to come out ahead.

He missed my 30th birthday because he had to work, which he got very angry about and started punching things in the house. I tried to tell him it was fine and that work was important, but it only seemed to upset him more. I tried to tell him that we were going to be fine financially and he was worried about nothing, but again, it only upset him more. It was really hard to hide my own disappointment but once he got angry, his feelings always took precedence.

Shane had taken off for the day of my party though, a big karaoke bash at Lulu’s Village Pub that was a joint party with Lilah. She was another one of us crazy Libras. Shane always said he never got along with Libras very well and often said that the two of us together were going to drive him nuts someday. We happily obliged.

During my birthday party, I took the stage and he watched excitedly. He loved to see me on stage. He never sang himself, but when it was my turn he would sit in front, appearing completely mesmerized. I sang him Love Will Keep Us Alive by The Eagles that night. It was everything I was trying to tell him when he was screaming a few days earlier.

“Lost and lonely, now you’ve given me the will to survive.” I sang to him. Though I could hear our friends cooing about how cute we were in the background, the only person I had eyes for at that moment was him. “When we’re hungry, love will keep us alive.”

I got off the stage as the last notes of the melody faded and fell into his arms. He wrapped me up tight and told me, “That was everything I needed to hear before. Thank you. I love you so much, Snugglebug.”

Our relationship picked up again from there and the ring on my finger felt more secure.

About a week later, right before Halloween, we decided to go to Wendy’s for a 2am late night run. Thankfully, even though we were nocturnal by that point, there were still some good fast food places along Deer Park Avenue that would serve us into the wee hours of the morning. While getting our baconators (and ordering at the drive-through by grunting like two deranged trolls “BA-CON-A-TOR!!”), Shane suddenly announced. “We should go for a drive.”

“We could go to Montauk,” I ventured. That was the farthest point out on the end of the island. We had always said we would drive out there some night in the dark and look at the stars. It would be really romantic at that time of night, all alone with each other– we might even be able to see the sunrise if we timed it just right.

He shook his head and said, “I want to go to Maine.”

“What?” I looked at him like he had two heads, neither of which was thinking quite rationally at the moment.

“Yeah, let’s do it! Let’s go to Maine!”

“Um.. are you feeling okay?”

“Sure. Let’s do it, Julie!”

Never one to miss out on a road trip to my favorite state, I agreed– but very reluctantly. I was really unsure about whether he was sane or not at the time. I went along with it anyway. We came back to the house, packed a few provisions and drove off in the middle of the night. I packed my mother’s ashes as well, because he always promised to drive me up to Sebago so I could scatter them in the lake.

I kept asking him for the first couple of hours if he was okay, and he said he was.. so eventually, I drifted off to sleep. I woke up with the two of us traveling through the backroads of some countryside, with trees full of autumn leaves and something very familiar about all of it. I had been here as a kid every year with my family– never in the autumn but the summer instead.

“Where are we?” I asked, as we pulled up to get gas.

“Maine!” He smiled like a madman.

“Oh, I thought that was a dream.”

“Nope!” He smiled wide again and got out to go pump the gas. I got out and stretched my legs. Sure enough, the air felt very Maine-ish, something about the smell of pine needles in it’s wind, and the huge boulder-like rocks that were lying around the land were the same granite that I had camped on when I was on vacation with my family years ago.

We made our way through the countryside and then to a back way to the campground my family used to go to every year, Point Sebago. We snuck in because it was closed for the season, walked around the lake, took a nice nap on some rocks, took many photos and I introduced him to my second home. He loved it and I was glad to be there with him. It was like I was showing him a part of my inner self.

We scattered my mother’s ashes and sat by my old campsite. I cried a bit and he hugged me. It was good to be there again but there were so many memories in my head of times when I sat on those same rocks, around that same campfire ring, by the same lake with my family. All I wanted all these years was someone to go there with me, to be there as I found peace with my past and to enjoy the lake as I did before and to let me cry if I had to– and he gratefully found the time to be there for me for all of this.

He told me the lake was beautiful and he loved it. “This would be a perfect place to hold a LARP.”

I smiled, I was so completely dating a gamer.

We carved our names in a nearby wooden shack. For all I know, those names are still there, carved in the wooden logs that are overlooking the lake. Years ago, I had scattered my sister’s ashes at the lake, then when my father died and was buried I wrote his name on a rock by the lake he liked to sit on during our summer vacations, now my mother was there as well– and now, as I think back, me and Shane’s names and our confession of love have joined them all to take a place by the lake which has become a growing memorial to all I’ve lost in my life. It seems fitting.

On our way home, I drove– and he woke up just in time for a surprise detour to Salem, Massachusetts. He was always talking about his vacation from when he was younger with his sister and their best friend when they went to Salem. After he experienced my past, I wanted to show him the same favor so we headed for a diner in the city. Then we took a walk around the Salem witchy places, most of which were closed though. Everyone kept telling us to stay for Halloween but we had to get back to the real world soon so he could go back to work.

We drove partly through Massachusetts and down a bit into Connecticut before stopping for the night at a rest spot. Somehow, we eventually got comfortable in the back of his truck with the seats down and a few blankets to lay on and cover us. I laid in his arms as I fell asleep, feeling a rush of adventure and the safety of his arms– it was the perfect dichotomy.

In the morning, we drove to Mystic, Connecticut because he had heard about how romantic the sights were there. We ate breakfast at some small shop, then went to a few museums, a lighthouse and tour through an old house that used to belong to the mayor of the city. We ate at the Dog Watch and crawled out onto the jetties. The setting sun on the Atlantic ocean coupled with the town’s lights as they came on one by one was really beautiful and the slight buzz I had going on from the drinks at the Dog Watch kept me all warm as we snuggled at the end of the jetty.

We went home that night– via the Orient Point Ferry, and saw some of the sights on the end of the island. It was dark but we visited main street in Greenpoint and the old farm where my friend had gotten married that summer. We picked up Chris, who was going to be staying with us over the weekend, and eventually came home to sleep in each other’s arms.

It was incredibly spontaneous and romantic; the way life should be.

After the somewhat tumultuous vacation in Florida, this trip was what I had needed– just time to get away with him, running off together and having adventures that we would remember for the rest of our lives together. I knew in those brief days in New England that he only wanted to be with me. I wasn’t fighting for his time or his attention, because it was fixed on me completely. Despite all the problems and broken promises that colored our relationship, there were things to hold onto and feel blessed by.

So many people have asked me throughout the years why I didn’t just leave when things got bad, and this is why it’s not that simple, because some days were the best days. Some days were full of passion and adventure and madness and laughter that it was like a drug I never wanted to come down off of just to live back in ordinary reality.

I came home completely head over heels in love again, knowing full well that I wanted to marry him. I still had some reservations about the actual ceremony; my parents wouldn’t be able to see me get married, Shane wanted a big wedding so he could invite his entire Italian family tree and we still didn’t know where we would live when we finally got married, but these were things we would be able to work out together.

We had talked a bit about where we wanted to move after finally saying ‘I Do’.

Shane wanted to move off of Long Island. We both had decided it wasn’t going to be possible to stay there long term because of the rising prices of everything. He was no longer making his truck driving money and I was still trying to get on my feet financially.

He wanted to go to Florida and had told me of this possible plan from the day I met him. Even though his family lived there though, I hated it. Everyone who had ever gone to Florida that I had known had thought of it as a land of milk and honey, where the streets are lined with gold and after they woke up from that dream, they realized that it’s a really hard place to live in the end. I also did not wish to live anywhere where he knew everyone and I had few people I can rely on, just on the off-chance that things went south.

We also had our eye on Virginia. Shane thought that if he moved there he may be able to get his sister and her family to move up there as well. Then we could all be together with my friend and his family; we’d be more balanced that way, with two support systems for both of us.

There was the slight change of remaining on Long Island, just because it was home to both of us and we were guilty of inertia. My friends on Long Island were very dear to me, but I only saw them during parties. The people that we hung out with regularly were mostly Shane’s friends and I knew them all through him, only having met most of them that past year. Shane said I wasn’t giving his friends a chance, and that there were plenty of people for me to talk to around where we lived but I was still lonely in the end. It just makes him feel inadequate because he said that if he was a good fiance he would be able to take all these feelings of loneliness away.

Once again, my depression was getting in the way. He figured if I could just be a normal person, maybe then I would accept his friends and family easier.

The other place that we looked at was Vermont. I would have loved to live in Maine, but their economy was so horrible and they looked down on any new incomers that stayed for a long time. Vacationers they loved and treated like gold – as long as the tourist left soon after. I figured it would be really nice to pool our money together and get a lake house in a nice place in Vermont. It would be lovely and so New England-ish and close enough to Maine to visit and for it to ‘feel’ like Maine without being in an economically drained area.

Despite all of our planning and even short day trips to look at houses in neighboring states, Shane seemed to have it in his mind that he wanted to go to where his family was in Florida. The more we talked in late autumn about the possibilities ahead of us, the more I started to wonder if he only proposed to me because he thought it would be easier to convince me to come away with him if he did so.

In the end, it came down to the fact that I didn’t even feel like I had a home in the world. I lived in places and occupied small sections of the world for a time, and had done so since first becoming homeless but my home was long gone. With my family gone, my life had gone up in flames the past few years and even though I was in love with Shane, trying to piece it back together sometimes felt impossible. Even with the vacations and trips we took, reality was something I could never run away from for very long.

It was a good thing that we were able to schedule a vacation before Shane’s birthday, because there wasn’t a lot that we could actually do once his birthday rolled around a week later. On October 29th, Long Island was hit by Hurricane Sandy which devastated the eastern coastline and knocked out power through much of Long Island. I had so many things planned for his birthday, but with the wind howling outside, the lights flickering and trees appearing to bend at impossible angles, we played board games in our upstairs living room.

“Do you think we’ll be okay, Shane?”

“Sure, we’ll be–” he started to say but then the wind whipped at the windows hard, making us jump. We both jumped and screamed at the sudden noise. “On second though, I think we might die, Julie.”

There was another loud noise outside, making us decide to go hide in our tenant’s bedroom with her until the storm passed. I hid under a blanket for quite a while on the tenant’s bed with her, peeking my head out for only brief moments at time to sarcastically ask Shane if we were going to live. He held my hand the whole time, joking that we were either going to be fine or we were going to die horribly, it really was a toss up.

By Halloween, the power in our neighborhood was out, all except for his house which lay at the intersection of two major roads. We ended up joking about how our neighbors were going to raid us because we were the keepers of the only electricity on the whole block. Only one group of trick-or-treaters came to our door that year, but we didn’t have any candy since the storm had left us unprepared, so we offered them batteries which were actually in high demand at the time.

We didn’t have any ingredients to make him a birthday cake and most of the stores were still closed, but this seemed to upset me more than him. It was the first birthday I would ever spend with my fiance and I felt completely inadequate. I ended up helping him to make us a simple dinner, because back then I wasn’t really much of a cook either.

The storm ended up creating a gas shortage on Long Island. Huge crowds lined up to buy gas from whatever gas station the radio said was getting a supply that day.

One day when Shane was still sleeping, I stood on line– because the line for cars was wrapped around several different blocks and I couldn’t seem to find the end of it– and managed to buy $20 worth of gas for him. I waited there for an hour, standing with other Deer Park residents who talked about the violence and shoot outs that were happening at other gas stations because people were getting annoyed at the lack of this essential item. We joked about how the guys on the line were going to protect the females if there was a shoot out.

I then lugged the heavy gas can three blocks to his truck, only to find out that the gas can I had didn’t fit in the truck because the hose was not long enough. Thankfully, more people came to help who created a sort of funnel thing to get it into Shane’s truck. Then they held it for a few minutes to make sure it all went in properly.

I was so proud though. Back then, I wanted nothing more to show him that I could be useful. I didn’t mind waiting out in the cold, standing in line or even the possibility of tensions getting out of hand as long as it meant I could come back home to him and have him pat me on the head metaphorically. I was going to be such a good wife someday, someone who their husband could depend on and whom they would know had their back. Shane mumbled a thank you when he woke up, got ready for work and left.

I had hoped for more, but I would accept that.

For Thanksgiving that year, we decided that we were going to host a gathering at Shane’s house. He couldn’t get off of work to travel down to Florida to see his family and I had no family left. We had been talking to one of our friends about how there were a lot of people in our social scene who didn’t have family on Long Island anymore or who simply did not get along with their family.

We decided we would have a Orphan’s Thanksgiving and invite all our friends. I was very excited, cooking and baking all week prior to the event. I made dozens of sugar cookies with pumpkin spice, peppermint candy cane and cherry cordial Hershey kisses. I also tried making Jello shots for the first time the night before the party. For Shane’s part, he went on a huge search for a gravy boat, because he was convinced we could not properly celebrate Thanksgiving without one. He also tried to find the biggest bird possible, never one to believe in keeping anything simple.

With our friends gathered around the table, we all went around to share one thing that we were thankful for that year. We spoke of loyalty and friendship, love romantic and otherwise– and for the first time since my family had withered away, I felt connected to something larger than myself. For better or for worse, I was at home. I felt content enough that I felt I could let down my guard.

Besides, I really enjoyed being the matriarch of the house that Thanksgiving, with all our friends telling us how lucky we were to have found each other. Even though people knew snippets of the troubles we’d faced that year, we were somehow an example for others of how love conquered all and that things could be worked out and relationships made to endure.

That, or they were all lying to us.