There is a missing part of me, something lacking in the mosaic of who and what I am today. It is hardly apparent when I live in isolation, but of late I dwell amongst people and invite them into my life in ways I never have before. Even when married, those who became my family were kept outside my private world. It was necessary and regrettable, but it was a firm rule I lived by for so very long and broke with such rarity that each violation exists in my memory as a beacon, slicing my existence into discreet parts.

Prior to 1967 the last confidante to share my life in whole was Jeremy. He changed me so deeply and fundamentally yet I am still unsure how he did it. He saw me the way no others ever had and somehow over an all-too-brief pair of decades he made me whole. In no small way it is the memory of those years with him that led me to where I am today, both physically and philosophically. It is because of him I have opened myself to the world the way I have.

I have seen more than three thousand five hundred passages of the Vernal equinox. To me it has always symbolized a release. Winter has passed taking its sickness and starvation with it and for a few brief weeks the world is clean and fresh. Summer will come with its own threats of disease and conflict, but for now, we are free.

The moment will fall in the wee hours of the morning on the American Eastern Seaboard. The sky will be dark and rain will fall. A cold breeze will sweep chill droplets against the windows. It makes no difference for I can feel the turning of the world in my bones, one reassuring constant throughout my long existence. Jeremy wondered why I greeted this Equinox with contemplation and even some emotion, yet other seasonal turnings passed without comment or care. I explained in as few words as I have employed here and he understood, but not in an intellectual way. Instead he grasped what it meant to me deep inside, how memories of Spring turnings past could fill my heart with joy, or tears and sometimes pain and shame. I remember where I stood for the vast majority of these events better than I remember many other important occurrences in my life. In some way these memories help to define for me who I have been and whom I have become.

I chose the Vernal equinox as the day I would mark the passing of years. It was on this day more than two thousand years ago I adopted the name I call myself today, eschewing the slave name Utha and the goddess Tiwaz? to become simply Zsallia who claimed a surly old Greek named Marieko as an ancestor. On the Vernal equinox of 592 CE I first took vows with the church. In 1348 on that day I stood vigil in a church as plague swept through the population, killing my adopted family and most of the small town. On that day in 1851 I stood over Jeremy’s open grave as he was laid to rest.

So I count my years with the start of Spring. This is my three thousand five hundred and thirty-fourth.

Posted on March 19th, 2008 by Zsallia
Filed under: Immortality, Life, The Past, The Present