2009 in words

In two weeks it will be the end of the decade and the end of the year and what a year it has been...for me at least. On new years eve i will be getting married, its quite an end to a year that has been full of ups and downs. I think i have experienced more emotions in the last twelve months than in the previous 27 years. I've made a lot of mistakes but i am putting them right. It all started in March when Amber had a miscarriage. I still shiver when i think of the moment when my mum called me to tell me. I was in the uk at the time and had only been there for 36 hours, i can't describe the how i felt, the worst kind of numb doesn't make sense but its the best i can do, heaven knows how amber must have felt. Walking into the hospital room where she was was like knowing you are about to be in a car crash, you know it's going to be bad but you can't do anything about it. It was impossible to say or do anything that could make it better. The hopelessness was paralyzing. For a while i was in denial, i didn't talk about it, or if i did i pathetically and disgracefully suggested it wasn't mine. If one of them was you i sincerely apologize, i wasn't trying to mislead you, i was trying to mislead myself. Then i ran away to dubai for work...and it really was running away. That couldn't have gone much worse, i can't talk about what exactly happened for legal reasons but i made some serious errors in judgement when it came to employing people and ended up if not being deported, then certainly advised to leave. If you read any of the stuff in the papers about employees living in squalid conditions then that is what i was involved in...though i didn't realize that's who i was employing at the time and if i had would have reported it. But i should have known, i should have done more background checks. So back in the US i had a lot of black marks against my name and it basically meant i had next to no chance of being able to continue running my business. Thankfully a firm did take a punt on me and i am now an employee myself...it has involved a substantial pay cut and we'll have to move next year but it could be a whole lot worse. Managed to get promoted once already so at least i haven't lost my architectural touch. And after all that the year will end on what will probably be the greatest day of my life, i feel very lucky indeed. How amber had the understanding and compassion towards me to keep us together is something i will never know...but i guess that's what they call love.