I first recall seeing Ming Na Wen on a soap opera. As The World Turns if I recall correctly, but it may have been The Guiding Light. That seems like a lifetime ago. I like the character Melinda May better than whatever she played on CBS daytime.

We get introduced to Melinda May sitting behind a desk in SHIELD HQ being ‘recruited’ by Agent Coulson. We leave Melinda May as the head of SHIELD Academy. She does a lot along the way. I feel a little like her today.

I tend to think about evolution a lot when I meet a moment and it’s time to decide where the road is about to take me. While I know where the road is going I am not totally sure of what will be along the way. Because I can see the finish line, there is an urge to race to it. I have to slow myself down on occasion, it’s not just important to get to the finish line, I must also enjoy the journey. I must also learn along the journey. I must also experience the journey.

The finish line is California. The starting point is about 2 years ago. This is the path.

I think about Melinda May like I will other ‘fictional’ characters as a reference to a point of sorts. In the scheme of things it’s kind of silly. Fictional characters are the imagination of someone else, I am not fictitious and I have my own imagination. If I am telling a story that I want you to relate to though, I need other sources for you to see so let’s look at Melinda May today.

Melinda was an over achieving child who grew up to be a spy. She was super smart. She was super physically talented. She joined SHIELD and advanced through the ranks becoming a specialist. It’s a high rank and only a handful can accomplish it. She takes a mission with Coulson at a date before the series starts which alters her forever. On the other side of that mission she shuts down emotionally and retreats to doing mundane work so she is not exposed to things like giving a fuck.

She joins Coulson’s team and over the years slowly begins to think again and feel again. She learns to love again. In the penultimate season she ‘dies’ but in her return she is empathic, like mutant level empathic. In the final season it’s her empathy which saves humanity. I don’t think I am gonna save humanity, I am not hopeful it can be saved. I do think that I can help some people along their path.

Melinda’s journey is not all that different than my own in some ways. I relate to her being special, being hurt beyond repair, retreating and then being placed in a situation where she needed to re-learn how to live and love again.

Melinda is also the baddest bitch in any room she walks into, so there rests another parallel.

The absence of proximity weighs on me at times. Nights like last night especially. I am presented with the reality of my choices. They are the correct ones I do not doubt that yet they are puzzling at times. I realize in the middle of all the other lessons dropped on my lap last night that I need to figure out what coexisting looks like. I realized the other day that as much as I ‘joke’ about pushing a bitch in the water I do not actually want that. While I would be just fine with her absence, he would not. Would be mourn and move on? Yes. It’s what we all do, all the time. I realized that I want to spare him the mourning process and as such I am willing to do things I did not previously consider possible.

I wrote him a note and at the end of it mentioned that I never expected to say those words. What I left off that was I never expected to say those words and MEAN them. I legit thought at some point along the way I could give a surface pass to the effort and tell myself I was satisfied and the clock would move on. That is not who I am though, and that is not what I want for him, even if it causes me a level of discomfort along the way.

I don’t ever wonder about the other OTHER woman. Our connection was cemented even before I knew he existed. I wonder about the yt woman. I spend all my damn time pushing yt people out of my space and denying them access to my emotions and refusing to allow them to center themselves in my existence and here I am …with a yt woman no less…at the center of my relationship.

The universe is laughing at me again.