Never Gonna Be Alone

Theme for this blog is Nickelback’s “Never Gonna Be Alone”. Feel free to listen while you read or listen then read or both, the choice is of course yours. This was however written while listening to the song, as it came on in my music list and it struck a chord, and so..I write.



Most often it is a song that instigates a blog for me, in some way, means or manner. Music greatly influences my thoughts. When I do not feel well, or cannot sleep because old memories come to haunt I’ll put on something that will soothe an old wound not yet healed despite the time since its injury occurred. Sometimes things just take time to heal and some things never really do. Not much you can do about that you just kind of drive on.

This late night entry comes about because my lupus is giving me a rough time, coupled with a chest cold preventing me from taking in air, I generally feel kind of icky. Tonight I felt really awful and asked Matt to lay with me for a bit. He did, he always does, and usually he ends up falling asleep despite his trying not to. I find a weird sense of pleasure in this. I love to watch him sleep, it makes me smile. I could live without the snoring, but I’m sure he could live without my sighing while I sleep too. Yes, I sigh in my sleep, long soulful sighs. Not repeatedly, just randomly throughout the night for no apparent reason. I have no idea why I do it, but I have since I was a little kid. Bizarre I know but…it is me so…that’s all the explanation I can offer. I do know one thing, I heard a customer once say to me that her husband’s snoring used to bother her an awful lot, until the day he had a heart attack, and was in the hospital and she slept alone. She said that night she would have given everything she had to have him snoring in her ear. So I don’t complain about Matt’s snoring, because I know I’d feel the same. Admittedly when he’s snoring in my ear I do tell him to roll on his other side, I do try to get some sort of sleep sometimes.

Anyway getting back to the original point…So I asked him to lay with me and as he always does he asked, “How come?” Now he knows the answer, he just likes to hear it, because every time I tell him he grins a little grin an gets a glint in his eye. It makes me smile every time. So I smile at him and tell him what he wants to hear which is also the truth, “Because, you make me feel better.” He dives onto the bed beside me as if he's diving into a pool, tossing me two feet into the air and catches me around the waist so I don’t go bouncing off, and tucks me against him. With a long happy sigh I can feel my entire body relax and everything that hurt only minutes before suddenly doesn’t feel so bad anymore.

When we were real young I went to pick him up at college in Springfield. I didn’t feel well, had been in pain for days, figured it was just a pulled muscle, and ignored it. By the time I had driven the hour and a half out there I was pale as a sheet. He got in the car to drive back and within 5 minutes I felt perfectly fine. We spent the next 5 or 6 hours with friends when I looked at him kinda funny and passed out cold. He drove me to the hospital only to find I had a kidney infection that should have been treated about 2 weeks prior. I had finals the next day so I somewhat dazed and slightly confused told the doctor that this whole kidney thing could wait since I had finals in about 6 hours and could he just give me some sort of prescription or something cuz I really needed to go now. He decided speaking to me was no longer the best course and went directly to Matt with, “She has about an 85% chance of not living through the night if she leaves here.” To which Matt replied to my request to leave with, “You’re staying.” with his “I’m not arguing this point so don’t even bother.” look on. I gave in, and spent the next 5 days in the hospital. I made up the finals, the next week, but this was the first incident of this type.

Since then on too many occasions to count for one reason or another broken bone, surgery, garbage truck, you name it, he’s been there to somehow take the pain away. I’m not sure how or why, but his mere proximity makes everything just…better. It’s somewhat strange. The poor man has had more than his fair share of scares with me. The same hospital incident I was on the phone with him. I made him go home to get some real sleep, a shower and a change of clothes since he hadn’t left my side in 3 and a half days. He finally relented and went home, then called me about 2 hours later. While on the phone with him the nurse came in to check my IV. They had drugged me to high heaven (not hard considering my innate inability to handle any type of narcotic) and the nurse tried to pull the empty iv line out and ended up ripping the iv itself out of my arm sideways. Blood was pouring out of my arm and all over his sweater he had left with me because it smelled like him. I started crying on the phone because I had gotten blood all over his favorite sweater and was apologizing profusely when our roommate Paul cuts in and says, “Anj? What’s going on? What’s the matter?” Trying in my drugged state to figure out where Matt was since I was just talking to him I tried to pull myself together to explain to Paul what was going on. I asked where Matt went and he said, “He just ran out of here at top speed.” We lived 45 minutes away from the hospital. I talked to Paul for about 15 minutes, and as I hung up the phone Matt ran quite literally into the room. He looked scared, mad, and frantic all at once. He surveyed my arm which was under a great deal of gauze at the time and then hugged me. Since then I can’t even throw him out of my hospital room anymore. I suggest he leave and he gives me the “I’m not arguing this point so don’t even bother.” He’s good at that look, I don’t see it often, but he has that one down. That sweater was indeed ruined. I tried on numerous occasions to throw it away since he can’t actually wear it and he hasn’t since that day. It’s just taking up space in the closet, and has for the last 20 years, but somehow that sweater keeps reappearing back in the closet.

It’s odd to me that his mere proximity makes me feel…well quite literally fine. I don’t know how having him simply being next to me works better than any cold medicine I could take. It does though. I tried to explain this to people in the past and they just look at me funny. While I’m used to having people giving me weird looks for things I say, this one seems to get the most. It’s strange to me that they don’t understand. I know this must be how most people feel, ok maybe not know but kind of hope anyway. I don’t think my husband has magical powers of healing. There is something there though. I don’t know what but he just makes everything better.

I can’t stop grinning as I type this out on the new keyboard he got me for my birthday. Yes, I am now 38 years old. He got me this flashy new glow in the dark super gaming keyboard that does 4 million things. It’s the best keyboard I’ve ever had and he was so happy when I opened it because he knew I’d love it. He wanted to give me something I’d use every day. He asked me what I wanted for my birthday but I’m really bad at thinking of things I want because….I have everything I want, so the best I could come up with was, “I dunno…umm poached egg cups? Or maybe a new Sharpie for my CD’s?” That was the sum total of the things I could think of even though he asked me every day for two weeks. I did also get a whole bunch of new Sharpies, and an Oster egg cooker, which is quite frankly the coolest kitchen gizmo. The keyboard though takes the cake.

I’m truly one of the luckiest people in the entire world. No matter what trials life hands me, I have him to be there, to dive onto the bed and bounce me two feet in the air and to catch me when I land.