When I was younger I had a boyfriend. We were together for years. He went to the Persian Gulf the first war. We had gotten 'engaged' before he went. It was actually pretty amazing. I was working for his parents. He came home on leave. He showed me his leave paperwork and it said his leave reason was to get engaged. I remember being so in love with him. I remember I was in high school. I was head over heels. I was sure we would get married. I knew I loved him. What did I love about him? Everything. I loved his smile. I loved that serving our country was something he was proud to do. I loved his honor and his integrity. I loved being around him and I missed him when he was gone. I remember writing these letters to him while he was serving. Using my work money to buy paper and stamps and spraying the letters with perfume (not realizing he could get made to do extra stuff when he got them). Sealing them with a kiss and sending them off. Waiting for a letter from him. I only got a couple. I was worried but understood. He was in the Army. He couldn't write all the time. Then came the call just after a Christmas break. I was so excited that he was going to be home in time for prom. I couldn't wait to start planning prom together. I hadn't been to a prom and I was ready to celebrate my prom with the man I loved.
I got a phone call. A man said that my fiancee (He used his name and did not refer to him as my fiancee) had given him my number. Said that he was moving to the area and was hoping I could show him around, show him where the fun places were to go etc etc. I told him absolutely! He stated they had served together. We talked for a little bit and then he said the words I will never forget, Yeah when I was at his wedding.....the world stopped. My world stopped. I remember him asking why I got quiet. Then he realized that this guy and I had been more than just friends. He apologized. I never heard from him again. I remember falling to the floor. I remember my chest literally hurting. I remember a few days later getting a call from my ex...yes my ex. A married man can't be your fiancee. He told me he hadn't gotten any letters from me. He figured I had moved on. I made a decision at that time that for me life was over. I thought about ending it. I thought about a lot of things. I wasn't anyone without him. I was no one. I was heartbroken.
Another man I loved and adore I met a few years later. I wanted nothing to do with him. He was the brother of one of my friends. He was also in the Army. I made it very clear I wanted nothing to do with him. But his smile kind of got me. I pretended like it didn't. I tried to friend zone him hard. But he asked if he could write to me and I said ok. He started writing to me with a card. All it said was I love you. Yeah for me it had been love at first sight but, well, I didn't believe in that either. But when I got that card....it felt destined. Yes I was a hopeless romantic. A college student. We talked all the time. We wrote letters all the time. I moved up to college and a horrible situation happened. I got raped. From that rape I later found out I had also become pregnant. I had a lot on my plate. He went out drinking and somehow found himself married to some woman he got married to when he was drunk. He couldn't handle that he had not been there for me.
I felt like I was back with the first person I loved. A man who would just go off and marry someone else. He got his marriage annulled which took a while but I really thought we were back on track. I went down to visit him. We talked about our future. Then I came home. I advised him I wanted him to take one week. Make sure he was ok with raising this baby I was pregnant for because I refused to have an abortion. For me it was not an option. Since I didn't have my actual parents growing up adoption was also out of the question. So I was raising this baby. I said take a week. Make sure you are ready for this. Then let me know. We had a plan. I was going to finish out the school term and then move with him. It was a plan or so I thought. We talked. He told me he loved me. I thought everything was on target. Until......he apparently had been home for Chrsitmas. I never saw him. Didn't know he was even in town. I had bumped into his sister when I hadn't heard from him in December. Here I am ready to tell my family I am leaving...and nothing. Then his sister said, yeah him and his girlfriend came up to visit for Christmas. I said oh that's nice. I hadn't heard from him. And a comment was made and she said his girlfriend is very nice don't screw this up for him. Obviously saying the family was not open for me to be part of it. So I stepped back. I let him have his life. I literally married the next guy I dated.
My life was over. He abused me, was arrested once. I went to a church and started waking up a little and then I wasn't allowed to go to church any more and No one from church checked on me. Even the women who knew I got abused sometimes. Why wouldn't they have checked on me. I was so alone until I finally woke up one day and finally figured out a way to leave where he wouldn't realize I was leaving and I ran for the hills. I dated some guys. None were the man of my dreams. Many were just users and such. I made a lot of wrong moves looking for someone to love.
I met a guy online. He seemed really nice. He was absolutely against abuse against woman and had been cheated on so I was sure he woudn't do the same to someone else. Guess again. Not only that when I started calling him on his cheating, he started accusing me. Telling everyone all around town I had boyfriends etc etc. Never did. He got his reputation kept clean while smearing mine. In comes husband number 1. Says he is going to fix everything. That he understands what he had done 10 years before. There I am being shunned by my former friends. Not knowing that the one friend that I thought I had had been sleeping with my husband as well. Just didn't know what else to do and was so lost I went for it and moved to Colorado. I thought I would be able to start over. At least my son would get to know his dad who had been absent and I figured I was in a better place if he started abusing me again. (crazy isn't it that it would seem normal that someone might abuse me?)
Yeah I was not mentally well. The way I saw it the two men I had given my love to completely had both seen fit to just move on to someone else that they married. I wasn't good enough. See I got myself into an unworthy head space. The rape did NOT help me. I felt like I was worthless. I should preface that my first boyfriend ever also cheated on me and is now married to her. And the boyfriend I had in the middle there also cheated on me with a friend of mine. So I learned really quickly that in the end of it all, the guys that I gave my heart to only wanted to screw it over.
I look back now and I think, why didn't I value me. My mother lost custody of me when I was little. When my grandmother got mad at me, she would tell me I was a liar like my mother when I wasn't lying at all. I learned that I was useless. You know what saved me from myself. God did. Yes, I will always be somehow in love with the two men that walked away to someone else. If they came back to me and said I love you and I want to be with you....it would be hard to not at least entertain that idea. I loved them completely and with everything I was. I loved them with everything I knew. My love for them was legitimate.
Yes I am married now. I have a great husband. He is very kind he doesn't beat me and he doesn't cheat on me. But somehow I wonder sometimes where the love is that I felt for Mr. 1 and Mr. 2. Sometimes I feel like a best friend or roommate in my own home. I pray daily that god will show this man the desire I need for him to have as my husband and the things I need. I try to tell him but it always comes out wrong because I feel like I am being selfish. Do I love him. Yes I do. Is that deep love that you feel for someone only for people who will treat me wrong? Is the love I feel for my husband an adult love? Something different than that severe happiness you have to see someone. Maybe it is because 1 & 2 were gone a lot. When we did see each other, it was more get as much time as I could in. Im not sure. Maybe no one really understands love. Maybe no one really ever teaches you what love is supposed to feel. The movies show that love I had for 1 and 2 but that is all just theater and drama. I don't know that I know the answer.
When you feel love for someone, what is it. Is it just happy to see them or talk to them. Does true love feel like a best friend you can tell anything too? Or does it feel like a person that you can desire and you smile just thinking about them. Or is it the person who drives you absolutely insane. I don't know the answer but I am curious what my readers take is.
Not gonna lie. I will always love Mr. 1 and Mr. 2. They will always have a piece of my heart. They took it even though they broke it. I don't know why. Maybe its because they were truly someone I love everything about. The broken pieces and the healed pieces of them. Their eyes when they smile and their smiles when they laugh. I love those same things about my husband. But if I was put in a room with either of them and him I don't know I would love either of them more than the other. Ironically the things I adore and love about one are completely different than the things I love about the other. Yeah it sounds bad I guess that I would even think about it. But I treasure these past relationships. I treasure the love I felt for them. I treasure them.
Before anyone says anything. No I am not saying I would leave my husband for them. I am just publicly wondering why love is different as an adult than it is when you are younger. I met my current husband when I was 37. I do love him. But there are things I would improve. I always ask him if there is anything I could do differently and he says no I do everything he would ever want a wife to do. I feel selfish sometimes wishing for some things that don't happen. And some of it is stuff that most women never have an issue with. Part of the problem probably is my husband has never been married before. I don't know how to teach him to be a husband in some of the ways a man should be a husband because well his family was a little different. Things weren't done the normal way. Maybe part of it is wishing for some of the things when I was with them that made me happy. Little things they did or said. Without knowing how much it meant. I just miss those things. That is what is missing. But is that grown up love or is that just things someone needs to learn. I don't want to ask for flowers. But I'd like some. I don't want to ask for a just because card, bud I'd like one.
