My yesterdays are all boxed up and neatly put away...

Sometimes it only takes a date, a smell, a word, a building, or a car to bring me back.  Something as simple as Thanksgiving causes me to flash back to my first year without my family.  

Ten years ago, the matriarch of the family was lying in a hospital bed dying slowly.  She was my constant, my support system, and I couldn't reach out to her. Many of my friends had all but ditched me.  I had always been the clown, the joker, the rock for them to lean on, but when needed help after a bad breakup with an abusive asshole and a hit with a serious family illness, they didn't like the sad clown -- I brought them down and they could have none of that.  

I started dating this guy, nothing serious yet, but a balanced version of me as I saw it; mature, calm, cool, confident, yet distant.  I wasn't comfortable in my own skin, but somehow he was fine with that.  He would just hold me. I didn't talk about what was going on in my life at home, but he somehow knew what to do without being asked.  No family to turn to, he created a family of friends for me to spend the holidays with. It was beautiful and warm...and when the day was done, he took me home and just held me.  I couldn't tell him what was going on, but his arms were open.  In the morning, he'd leave, and a few months later, he'd not come back.

I'm beginning to think that some people were meant to serve as a walk-on cameo in the story of our lives.