Well, first let me say
thank you to everyone who has already made me feel so welcome and been so helpful. ~~BIG HUGS~~ I posted in the Visa section first a few days ago and decided it was time to make my "formal" introduction in the welcome forum. I'm just so NOT a lurker by nature!
My name is Autumn (yeah, really...on my birth certificate and everything). Like my sig says, my mother named me Autumn Dawn even though I was born in the Summer and at Night (and no, she wasn't some strange hippie type...LOL...she just loved the time of year and thought the name was different and beautiful). And, yeah, the rest of my life has seemed to be just that crazy, odd, and mixed up........that is, until I met Jamie and I found my reason for breathing.
In July of last year, in a desperate attempt to escape my worsening depression and suicidal-ness, I joined a posting board for fans of a favourite author of mine. The board strongly encouraged member creativity and artistic-ness and so I felt it was the place for me to excercise and share a few of my writing gifts (poetry and songwriting specifically). It became my diversion from my increasingly miserable "real-life" which wasn't a LIFE at all, it was merely existence. It was a place I could pour my soul out on those pages....and, on those pages is where I found my soul-mate.
Jamie, too, had joined the board having a desire and need to escape his real-life situation. He was a very gifted writer and photographer but the woman who had been his partner for 12 years did not appreciate him for the magnificently talented and wonderful person that he is. She never supported him in his dreams and interests. She spent her nights in her favourite pub with her friends and ignored Jamie unless she was really drunk (sad, huh?). He did not share this with me at first. At first we just became friends and then started to write together....and that was wonderful.
As for me, I had been divorced for some time and had suffered through a string of lousy and just plain wrong relationships.
I had never collabed with anyone before. But, Jamie became the voice of my heart. He would write something and I would sit there and read it, with tears streaming down my face, and say, 'I could have written that'. It was like he was reading my very soul and putting what he found there on paper. When we started writing together we found - even though our styles of writing aren't perfectly the same - we complimented each other so that when other people read our collabs they couldn't tell who had written what. We shared a poetic and literary "Voice" and it seemed to be screaming one thing: We belonged together! We both knew it....we both tried to deny it....for a while, that is. Until we could do so no more. During this time Jamie came to the inevitable conclusion that his marriage had been over for a looooooong time but he still didn't tell me how he felt about me. Not until.....
November. And I hit the lowest low of depression I had ever had. I called it the Abyss. Some great poetry ended up coming out of it.....but, that was the only thing "great" about it. It hurt to breathe. Plus, I had discovered that I was deeply in love with a man who was perfect for me. However, an ocean and over 4000 miles seperated us. U'm, not to mention, he was married.
I stopped going online very much at all and I stopped talking to everyone on the board. I stopped doing much of anything other than sleeping and crying. It hurt to breathe, it hurt to talk, it just hurt...and I was so exhausted. People were sending me messages, they were worried about me. Jamie left me IMs, I could tell he really missed me. I went back to bed and prayed to die.
My roommate and dear friend Dana (who had been hearing me talk about the board I was on....and had heard me go on and on about Jamie) said one night, "You need to go online and talk to Jamie....he loves you".
I knew that was true. But, that - I thought - was tragic! I loved him, too.....what were we to
do?
I went online that night. Jamie was on, waiting and praying that I would come on. He said that when my IM screen popped up, he shouted to the ceiling, "THANK GOD!"
Well, to attempt to make a really long story short (after all, we are planning on writing a book together to tell the WHOLE story....I'm trying not to write the whole thing out here, LOL), we finally came clean to each other that we loved each other....and knew that we belonged together.
So, at that time in the middle of November, he left his now ex-wife, booked tickets to come and see me in December (at Christmas time), and got the process of divorce started. She (the now ex-wife, that is) admitted that she was relieved actually. She had known that marriage had been over for some time as well, but she had lacked the courage to end it herself.
My Jamie came to me in December. When I went to meet him at Orlando International Airport it was truly magical. As soon as our eyes met everyone and everything else in the room started to fade. All of the clamour and noise of a busy airport at Christmas time started to silence. By the time we were in each others' arms everyone else was gone and it seemed we stood in a vacuum. We were the only two people who existed in the world. I know, that sounds all too much like some movie story...but, that's exactly how it happened. And, that is, indeed, how it is. No one else in the whole world exists for us. Just me for him, and him for me.
That was the best Christmas EVER! He asked me to marry him. I said YES! He came back to visit me in February for Valentine's Day, then again in April right after Easter. I came over here at the end of April and now we are getting all in order to marry and then when I go back in October we will get everything ready for when he comes in December and we will go to the NY consulate and get my spousal visa. Then, I will come back home with him.....finally to STAY!
HOME. This is home. Not because I love England and think it's beautiful (which I do). This is home because home is only where my Jamie is.
I am happy for the first time in my life.....all because of this wonderful man who changed my life. For nearly 30 years I had felt that I had lived nearly 30 years too long. Now I want to live....and, it no longer hurts to breathe. Because.....Jamie
is the reason I breathe!
Sooooo...that's me and my "formal introduction"....LOL. Hopefully it's not too long of one!
And, hopefully, some of you will find it interesting and entertaining to read as well.
I look forward to getting to know everyone and making new friends here.
