Tag: womenveteran

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Electric Connection: My 30 Day Space Available Adventure, Part 3

We left off last time with Jake’s request:

“You don’t have to sleep in the Livingroom tonight. No. Let me put it another way. Sleep with me tonight?”

So what did I do?

Spoiler Alert! I didn’t sleep on the couch…

I will spare you the gory details, this isn’t a purple prose romance. But yes, there was always an intense connection between me and Jake. It was instantaneous and electric, as if no time had passed. There was no being near one another without touching. No touching without kissing. No kissing without…you get the idea.

Confidence is King

I bet you’re curious as to what Jake looked like. I think it’s funny how so many romance novels describe these towering six-foot-tall “Alpha Males” with bulging biceps, and tanned washboard abs. Jake wasn’t like that at all. I’m five-foot-nine, and Jake was slightly taller than me. Many say that confidence is sexy, and I can attest to that. Jake had a quiet, calm confidence that in my encounters over time with other men, few have ever been able to duplicate. His confidence drew me like a lode stone swings north, and it was comforting to connect with him once more.

Tough Questions

Toes in the silky white sand of the Carolina shore, I was reading The Lord of the Rings, The Two Towers while I drank cheap beer with Jake on the beach. I made it my mission on this trip to finish reading the entire Tolkien trilogy since they were making all three into movies, and the third one was coming out in theaters soon.

Laying on the beach blanket next to me, Jake asked, “Are you still going to try to fly to Germany and see him?”

I knew this wasn’t an idle question. Remember that confidence, I mentioned about Jake? His confidence wasn’t a brash arrogance. Nowadays we hear a lot about “mansplaining” or guys just giving their advice without asking. Jake wasn’t like that. But he would ask questions to draw you out, at times even play the Devil’s Advocate. He wanted to know what I was thinking without trying to tell me what to do.

I put the book aside and rested my head on my hands. While I hadn’t officially “broken it off” with Bob, in my heart, it was over. The initiating event of what he had said about “not wanting to work,” had been weird enough. But his violent, expletive filled emails showed me a side of him that was truly terrifying. If he could be like that in an email, what would he be like in person when he got angry?

“No, Jake. I don’t want to go anywhere near him.” I looked out over the waves crashing against the shore, thinking about how Bob was over across the sea somewhere. It was strange how fast my thoughts about him had changed. Less than a week ago, he was a guy that was professing that he wanted to marry me and that he loved me. Now he was sending me hate filled emails about how horrible I was.

I didn’t know him at all. I felt incredibly stupid and naïve.

“You’re going to stay with me for the next week or so, right?” he asked, handing me another beer. I could see the tension release across his shoulders and the relief in his eyes.

“Yeah, I’ve got a whole month off. I talked to my friend Bri. You remember her, right?”

“A little bit, she was in your class in Prototype.”

“I told her if I could get a flight, I would try to make it up her way to Virgina.”

He smiled, “Well we’ll make the most of your time here until you go.”

Another Message From Bob

The Insincere Apology

That afternoon we went back to Jake’s to clean up before we went out to dinner. He took a few days off from work in honor of my being in town. I decided to go online to check for flights for the following week. Indeed, there was a regularly scheduled flight from Charleston to Virginia, leaving the next Monday. I could hang out with Jake for almost nine days.

Meanwhile, an email from Bob made my stomach sink. It was an apology—sort of.

“I’m sorry you took what I said the wrong way. I forgot that girls can be so sensitive about crap. I’m going out for a field exercise for the next two weeks. When I get back we can talk.”

Yeah…okay.

I showed that and the other emails to Jake. His jaw set in a hard line.

“You don’t think he’s sorry, do you?” Jake asked me, crossing his arms over his chest.

“Not for a moment.”

Next: Making and Breaking Connections and Slaying Giant Spiders…

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I joined the Navy at 18 to escape a small town in the Mojave Desert. A diagnosis of MS disrupted my dreams of becoming an astronaut or a super spy. I made limoncello from my lemons and became a super electrical engineer instead. My fascination with live high voltage drew me to Alaska. I came for the job, but stayed for the adventure. I enjoy blogging about my journey as a woman working in STEM, my experiences dealing with everything MS has handed me, and the wonder of the Alaska wilderness. My husband and I have undertaken the task of turning 30 acres of remote land into an off-grid retreat. I write stories about unique women in STEM who save the day and the hot guys who sometimes help along the way, as well as historical fiction about the Klondike Gold Rush. Teasers for these stories can be found on my website. I self-published my first horror novella, The Dark Land, on Amazon in May of 2020. I released the sequel, The Devil’s Valley, in May of 2021. Both stories are set in the wilderness of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, and draw on the Athabascan “Head Waters Peoples” legends of the Cet’ann, or “The People With Tails”.

Some places were never meant for humans to trespass…
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The Queen of Ghosts and the Precipice of Change

“I’m going in to the neurologist tomorrow to get the results-to find out whether or not I have MS,” I told him, I looked up into his eyes, choking on tears.

He wrapped his arms around me, pulling me closer, comforting me in his warm, strong arms. “It’s okay, baby. I’ll be there for you. Call me afterward.”

That was 20 years ago. To this day I can remember how silky the warm sand felt beneath my feet on that South Carolina beach. How the beacon of the lighthouse flashed like a brilliant white star and the salt from the ocean spray tasted on the night wind.

I’ll never forget the pain when he didn’t answer the phone.

It wasn’t the first time I had been ghosted, nor would it be the last. But it would be the first time I was ghosted because of my MS.*** I faced the diagnosis that would end my Naval career alone.

I look at the calendar and realize I am fast approaching my MS diagnosis anniversary (June 1). The year 2000 was a year of tumultuous change in my life. So far, it looks like 2020 will be as well. Not just for me, but for so many others. I find myself once more standing on the precipice of an enormous shift in my life. But unlike in 2000, I am looking forward to the leap, even though I am not entirely certain what the future may hold.

On Monday, I will head into my old office to pack my desk. The end date for the job that brought me to Alaska is coming quick. For the first time in almost 25 years I am going to take a break. Admittedly, I am both nervous and excited at the same time.

The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I look around at 2020 and wonder how I will remember this year 20 years from now. Will it be with a sense of darkness for a year of strife? I’d like to think it will be bittersweet. I want to look back see a feeling of hope, that we, as a society stood at the precipice of self-destruction and chose a better path. What do you think will be the choice? Who will you choose to be? We’re half-way through.

Thanks for reading! Sorry for the rather gloomy blog this week. I promise next week will be more uplifting.

Ray and I have a lot of projects planned for not only this summer but beyond. We’re going to be doing experiments with our solar kit out at the cabin and hopefully some wind studies on our 31 acres in the hopes of putting in some wind turbines eventually. We’re building two new structures on the property this summer.

For those who follow me on Instagram, you know that Ray is working on several new sculptures for the property. In the meantime, my first self-published novella, The Dark Land is out on Amazon. I am working on the sequel, as well as continuing to query some of my other novels.

The legend of Alaska’s Headless Ravine is steeped in blood. Its hunger for human flesh never sleeps, even in the deepest cold of winter. Courage, skill and love will be stretched to the limits on the frozen boundaries of The Dark Land.

We have some other projects up our sleeves, TBA soon.

Side Note:

***I know some will ask, how do you know he ghosted you because of your MS. This is the cautionary tale of:

Don’t date (then ghost) someone you work with.

This could practically be another blog unto itself. But other coworkers knew we had been dating and found out why he suddenly dumped me. Apparently, he didn’t think it was that big a deal, so he told everyone the truth about what he’d done. Let’s just say the rest of the guys at work let him know what a sleaze move that was. I didn’t have to. The best revenge is sometimes when someone else makes themselves look like a jerk. Even though it really hurt at the time.

True Friends

And to give credit where credit is due, while I got ghosted, dumped and diagnosed, three of the most awesome guys I had the privilege to serve with in the Navy requested leave from the Enterprise and drove down to Charleston to cheer me up. I’ll forever be grateful for their kindness and support. This is also my answer to the question, can men and women be friends. Absolutely. Friends and shipmates.

Mikey, Dave and Drew, three of the greatest friends and shipmates who came to my rescue when I was feeling my lowest. I will be forever grateful for their friendship.