Yesterday, I found a picture of Gomez and me.

Someone took that picture a decade plus a few weeks ago at my boss’s Christmas party in 2009. We were smiling and hopeful. We were secure.

I was still an accountant.

It was a snapshot of life before.

Before Gomez’s immune system started to eat his joints, and before the million dollar pancreas incident; when we were able to afford whatever it would take to get him well because “medical care or groceries” wasn’t a choice we’d ever had to make.

Before Gomez got a second master’s degree; when Elroy still had a college fund.

Before one bad career decision made in good faith snowballed into 100 more bad decisions – each one with a worse outcome than the one before it.

Before my dad passed away.

Before we gave up the life and home we had made for ourselves because we trusted people when they gave us their word.

Before our spirits were bruised because we spent a year without a home of our own. When being “homeless” was an abstraction instead of something we had actually experienced.

Before I had ever experienced betrayal or carried around the leaden weight of grief; when I was able to tend to my mental health because I could afford to do it. When an appointment didn’t mean taking a half a day off work and trying to line up a driver for the hour-and-a-half trip because I was still able to drive and the therapist’s office was five minutes from my job.

When “back home” was a day trip destination instead of actually “home.”

Before epilepsy.

When “Everything will work out. It always does” was something I believed with all of my heart; when that phrase gave me enough hope to make it through the occasional rough day. Before it became a mantra that Gomez and I use daily when we discuss situations that we don’t have any real solutions for.

The 2010s simply broke me, but I keep scanning the horizon for brighter skies.