I'd waited for this time to happen all of my working life. When I retired, I told myself all of those years, I'd do all of the things that I had set aside while I had my nose to the grindstone, my head in The Books.
I was going to go on cruises and experience other countries. I was going to travel; to Europe, to the Middle East, to the Pacific. I was going to return to the hobbies I'd dreamed of working on full time, once I had the time.
I was going to sleep in late.
I hadn't accomplished all of those other dreams, but this one I was. Watching TV until late or reading a book, and then...
Here I was at 63, divorced, exhausted, and deep in a depression that had been building for the last seven months since I'd retired. I would look in the mirror after I'd had a shower, and wonder, Where is that woman that my husband just couldn't get enough of when we were first married?
Now I saw that sad face with more than a few wrinkles that belied earlier happier times, and a head of steel grey hair that hung limply down to my shoulders.
Now I was just a worked out, worn out husk of that younger woman. My husband had left me years ago for a much younger woman, and I'd taken the house as revenge. Then I found that that house had too many memories for me to bear living in, so I sold it. And then I put what I made into the fund for all of my adventures that I was now having a hard time doing anything except imagine.
Was this the life I was going to have until I died? I knew I should get out more. I knew I should do more than just go shopping. I knew I should go dancing, go to bars; the whole "put myself out there again" thing.
I just didn't feel up to it.
I didn't have any children or grandchildren that most of my friends seemed to relish having around. That was part of why my husband left me. He'd begun to want to have children when he hit his forties. I was no longer 'just enough' for him, like he'd always told me. Back when I was vibrant and alive and not bogged down in work.
So I'd moved into this one bedroom "luxury" apartment. It had a pool that I never went to. It also had a gym that I never worked out in. It had a nice view from the roof that I never seemed to go up to enjoy though.
I didn't know any of my neighbors. All of my friends became former friends as their lives got caught up in their families. I was really in rather sorry shape.
That's when I bumped into Him.
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This is a really nice building, I thought to myself after moving in. It was predominantly an adults only building, with a smattering of families here and there. It was more high end and made for adults rather than children, and I liked that.
It was rather on the impersonal side though, with it's smooth doored hallways and (at least on my side) balcony-less apartments. Oh, I'd been to the rooftop pool a number of times and struck up conversations with others from the building, but no real friendships had developed out of that.
It was a sweet building for someone like me who had seen no need for a house that I had to take care of. Here, everything was done for us.
For me, having come from a rather hardscrabble childhood, to be living in this building at 35 was a dream come true.
Work didn't provide more than the usual drinking after work, and I was never really one for having a lot of friends. I'd gotten that beat out of me in high school. College had been a good place for me, as I developed friends there, but none of them had ended up becoming lifelong friends. After college, they all just seemed to... fade away.
I went to work and then I came home. I went on vacations (when I could afford them), and went out to concerts and movies, always feeling like I was a 'single' pariah by not having a girlfriend or wife to be out with.
I'd lived a fairly solitary life. I didn't get along with my family. "He's too good for us," they'd say when I was home and they didn't think that I was hearing them. That is, when I did bother to go home at all. (Which was becoming more and more infrequent.)
I wasn't movie star handsome, and I didn't make a lot of money, so relationships were, for the most part, not in my future. (I thought.)
I went to work, I came home, I went out. Less and less as the years went by.
That's when I met Diana.
I'd seen this solitary woman several times, her head bowed down and heading home with groceries in her hands. She was older than me, so even though I thought that she was a nice looking woman -- bordering on beautiful to my mind, if not for her depressed looking demeanor.
I thought at the time, that she looked as if she were in her mid forties. She was on the slender side, And she dressed casually, not emphasizing her figure.
One weekend, I was about to pass her in the hallway, when one of her grocery bags began to break open. Luckily I was in front of her when this happened, and I was able to rush in and help grab the opening bag in time before it ripped open completely.
"I've got that! Here, let me help," I told her, as she looked at the point of tears.
She grappled with the breaking bag while I took the other one and grabbed for the breaking one, and she got flustered beyond what I thought a breaking bag would create.
"Oh, God!"Β She began crying. And then looked up at me. "I... um... Thank you. I--" she said again, and began breaking down completely, her tears flowing as she said, "I'm such a stupid old woman."
I set the bag I had down, and took the breading bag out of her hands and set that down. And drew her into my arms to calm her. Luckily for me she was too engrossed in her emotions to reject me from this intimate gesture.
Now that I had her in my arms, she just collapsed into a blubbering mess. I just held her, not really knowing what to do. What she was feeling was just so much more than I thought the situation called for.
"I'm sorry," she whispered as her sobs began to quiet down. "It's just... It's been such a long time since someone has-- Touched me."