All the King’s horses and all the King’s men…

I’m going to be honest.

This is something that is hard to admit.

And I know there will be some of you who aren’t going to believe what I am about to say.

Many of you are going to shake your head and wonder “How could you forget?”

But in all honesty, I can hardly remember what happened that day.

The day he left.

What we said standing in the airport…

I don’t remember.

But when you’ve spent so much time trying to move past the pain.

So much time trying not to think about it.

So much time trying not to remember.

I guess eventually you do succeed and forget.

It’s like physical pain. You remember that it hurt but you don’t quite ever really remember the details of the pain.

I guess the same holds true for emotional pain.

Til this day I can still cry over the loss but I can’t remember all the details.

But what I do remember is…

I was living my dream.

Soaking up every site and sound.

Every drop of wisdom from my acting coach, my voice coach, my Shakespeare coach and on and on.

Every day was something right out of the movie "Fame" and I was living it.

And I was doing this.

And I was doing that.

And to be perfectly honest I don’t think I said we since I got on my “I Horse”!

It was Christmas 1994.

One year later.

One year after I faced the unimaginable and rescued myself from my own suffering.

It was a long hard fight but I was on the other side.

And it was my turn to go to England.

And I knew this.

My sailor wrote me a letter, like he had done so many other times before but this letter also included plans for me to go to England.

He wanted me to come stay with him and his family and it was my turn but I…

Well I was in love with Manhattan and the Theatre and my acting classes and my dance classes and my voice classes and I had to rehearse and needed to practice and…

I think he had other plans and me going back to school didn’t fit into those plans.

And somewhere along the line he also got on his “I Horse”.

And even though I was riding high on my “I Horse” none of it would have interfered with our plans.

But his “I Horse” even though it included me none of it was part of the plans we made.

He had bought a house with his brother.

But there was more to this house.

So much more. That house was like a condemnation notice.

He condemned us.

But I didn’t know it at the time.

I told my sailor that I couldn’t go to England and that he had to come here.

I promised him that the next time I would go there…next time (little did I know there would be no next time)

And so he did. Come here. But he wasn’t happy about it.

As a matter of fact he was downright angry about it.

He was angry about everything.

When I talked about anything he would say he didn’t like it.

“We’re studying Anton Chekov. Aren’t his plays amazing?”

“NO! I don’t like Chekov.”

“Shakespeare?”

“Hate him”

“Arthur Miller”

“Hate it”

“The Beatles?” “Journey?” “The Doors?”

“Horrible!” “Awful” “Abysmal”

“Mac & Cheese, Beer, Pizza?”

“No, No, Not anymore!”

You get the point. MAD!!

But I had to go to rehearsals while he was here even though it was Christmas vacation.

I tried to include him in my excitement. I tried to show him what it was that I loved so much.

So, I brought him with me a couple of times to NYC, to my new home and of course to the Theatre.

And I asked him what he thought of my school, my new friends, the director, my scene.

I bet you can figure out his response…

“Et, Uck, Hmm, Ehh”

MAD!

I don’t know if it was me he hated or the fact that I went back to school and ruined his plans.

But here is the thing. Here is why that house turned into so much more.

It wasn’t in our plans.

That was his plans…

The ones he didn’t tell me about.

Our plans…

He told me he was going to leave the Navy in 1995 and move to the United States. This is something we started planning years earlier and the last I knew was that he told me that he already contacted the British and American Embassies to put our plans into motion.

But then he bought house in 1994 and re-enlisted in the Navy for another 4 years.

Not our plans at all.

If he bought a house and re-enlisted, he had no intention of moving to the United States or leaving the Navy.

That means somewhere we lost OUR plans and I guess we had just his.

He had new plans and without knowing it I think I threw a monkey wrench into those plans.

But as I said I can only speculate.

He never told me what the new plans were.

He never told me why he left.

I can only hypothesize about what it was that couldn’t put us back together again.

I came home from rehearsal and he was gone.

And you have to remember that this was a time before cell phones.

I think the only people at this time who had cell phones were those who were pretty “well to do” and the cell phone itself was the size of a regular phone with a long, retractable antenna.

And actually I think it was only car phones that you could get at the time, but anyway, I couldn’t just call and see where he was. Or text to find out.

I had to figure it out.

And I did when I noticed it was not just him that was gone but everything was gone.

All his clothes, his suitcase.

I called my mom.

She had brought him to the airport.

She said he wanted to be home with his family.

He called her for a ride.

She didn’t know what to do.

I frantically drove to the airport.

And that’s where it ends.

That is what I can’t remember.

I remember crying.

I remember yelling at him:

“How can you do this to me after all I went through last year!?!?”

Once again I was on my “I Horse”.

I remember him leaving but I don’t think I realized at that moment that I would never see him again.

But that was the last time I ever saw him.

And I never loved that way again either.

But what happened when I heard from him again over 8 months later is even more tragic then that fateful day in the airport.