Lucky Thirteen and Counting

I feel compelled to write today about mistakes that I have made in the past in order to prevent others I care about from making the same ones.

I know I have eluded on this blog to the fact that I cheated in my past marriage.  I don’t think I have ever gone into much detail about the actual story.  Because this is a public blog, I want to be cautious not to publicly “out” a third party and cause any more damage than I already have. 

But reconnecting with old friends this past week, it has been brought to my attention that there is a need for a little education on first loves and why they make it possible to destroy a home. 

Anytime high school friends get together the reminiscing starts. We all want to remember the good old days, and some of us wish we could have them back.  I have talked with a few friends that have mentioned their desire to reconnect with that first love……..

I had a first love.  I spent a good fifteen years wishing I had ended up with him, missing the way he made me feel, hanging on to the memories, recalling over and over the first time he told me I was the one he wanted to spend forever with and remembering how belonging to him felt.  It was pure, it was innocent, and it was without restraint.  I had more passion for him than for life itself.  We had a passionate relationship.  We loved that way, and we fought that way.  We spent every possible second together and when the days weren’t enough for us, we snuck into each other’s windows at night.  We lived that way for almost a year.  Seventeen!  The age I remember with the most clarity, the age I filled with drama and heartache.

I got pregnant and the innocence ended as quickly as it began.  While I felt we could stroll into the sunset together and raise lots of little hockey players, his parents had different plans.  He was a good little Mormon boy, one that was expected to serve a mission and marry in the temple.  You can’t do that if you have knocked up your girlfriend. 

Enter boyfriends hysterical parents.  They talked to the Church authorities and they said he could still serve a mission as long as he is living in a different part of the world and where nobody knows about his little screw up back in Utah. His parents shipped the love of my life off to Oregon.    I was seventeen, pregnant, and alone. This was not what I had signed up for.  This was not what my fairytale had looked like.  I carried that baby for seventeen weeks and ended up with another broken heart, a dead fetus, and a D&C.  But, I got my boyfriend back just in time to sit with me while I went through it.  He was there when I woke up.  

I don’t know if I was emotionally mature enough to actually deal with all that had taken place.  I loved this guy, I wanted this guy, but I blamed him for the HELL I had just gone through, the loss of a life I had wanted, a baby I had wanted.  The passion continued, it just seemed weighted to the negative side more often than the positive.  We spent more time fighting and crying than loving and laughing.  But the love never went away. He was the one I wanted!  He was the one I had created a life with.  He was my dream. 

He went back to Oregon.  I went to Atlanta to work as a nanny.  I came home and married another man.  I stood there on my wedding day, as all of Bountiful walked through my wedding line, and I waited……..I waited for the love of my life to come through the door and rescue me.  He didn’t come.  He didn’t stop the wedding, like I had dreamt so many nights he would.  He didn’t crash through the door and sweep me into his arms and carry me off to Oregon with him like I had imagined so many times…..  He just didn’t come.

Fast-forward fourteen years- I had been thinking about the one that got away for half my lifetime.  I was in an unhappy marriage.  It was my 14^th wedding anniversary and all I could think about was that night he didn’t come. How different my life would have been if I had ended up with him.  I couldn’t stand it any longer.  I picked up the phone and made my past my present.  One “Hello” was all it took.   The emotional affair began and the physical one was quick to follow.    “Going back” was so easy.  The feelings are so deep, but they exist so close to the surface, they are easy to dive into.  I didn’t stop for two seconds and think, “what the hell am I doing?”  I knew where I wanted to be, and I stopped at nothing to be there.  Promises of  ‘we will be together forever’ were so easy to believe. I had been hanging onto those words for so long and I had always known that was the way it was intended.  I was such a fool.

Fast forward to present- If you want to get over your first love, childhood crush, or high school boyfriend, and you don’t care about destroying your life in the process, make them part of your present. I not only destroyed my life, but I allowed him to destroy me all over again.  It helped to see him in an adult light, with the maturity I needed to decipher the truth.  I do not blame anyone but myself for my stupidity.  The shallow, selfish behaviors that I am ashamed to admit I have, cost me plenty.   I do not want anyone reading this to think I condone affairs of any sort. I also don’t want you to think I would ever pass judgment.  I will just sit down with you and have a good cry.

I am lucky I have been given a second chance at life.  I didn’t get a second chance with my previous husband and I frankly don’t believe I deserved one.  But I did get a second chance at life.  I am un-deserving at best.  I have learned plenty from falling on my face.  I have gotten over the insane feelings I had for my first love.  I wish him the best and hope he finds the happiness he deserves.  That is where the feelings end.   

To answer the ‘Question of the Day’ posed by Dave. 

Have I seen the face of God?

No, but I have seen the face of Satan when I walked through Hell. and it sucked!