So, it’s been four months and twenty days since I last wrote here.

With a degree of certainty, I believed that if I just took a break for a while, and focused on my day to day life, I would be able to push my demons into the space they deserve and move away from the darkness.

I was wrong.

This month, was the anniversary of Annie’s birth. It has now been fifteen years since she passed at forty, and the truth is, my grief for her has never waned. I miss her every day and some of those days are impossible to face. It seems like everywhere I go and everything I do, brings back memories of us together and all the plans we had for our future.

After all of this time, I have come to the conclusion that my grief over losing her will never pass. Yet, I look at this as a positive, as I have no other choice. It must be a positive, as my memories of her are as vivid in my mind as the days we made them.

Annie is with me wherever I go. While my sadness and depression over losing her is a constant that I successfully hide from everyone, the memories we made shall never die as long as I can take a breath. It would have been quite different, had I known other people whom I could have shared our story with when she was still alive. Other than a select few, that was not the case. Back then she endured so much discrimination, that I am not sure how she could carry on in the attempt at a normal daily live we take for granted.

I will always take her memories with me, as they represent the fact that I enjoyed the love of an amazing, intelligent and beautiful woman both in public and private.

Going forward, as I recall all of the many events of our relationship, I will attempt to put more of them down into this journal. While I only had her for a scant year, she will always be my heart. 

Sure, I know many people, but none but a select few will ever know of Annie. That is how I will continue to protect her. Her secret is safe with me. While she will no longer have to live through the discrimination that was a constant in her life, I will also no longer give the power of that discrimination over to anyone who never knew her. She is safe with me as she always was when we were together.