Learning to Dance in the Rain

I haven't written much this week. That's not to say I didn't feel things. Boy did I feel them! In general they were the same things I have been feeling and there was nothing original to share. On Tuesday after having to harass him to talk to me he finally did. He did man up and say that he had been mean, that he was scared and was avoiding me because he didn't know what I wanted to say to him. To me that is the behavior of someone who knows they were wrong. Avoidance doesn't solve anything. We talked for a while, I got to say something that I needed to. I'm not sure there was any closure but at least I stood up for myself. He did admit that he handled all of this very poorly. Yes he did. That might be the first thing we agree on. I still don't want to talk to him, or see him ever again. I just don't see this changing. He claims that he went home and for two nights was very emotional about how much he had hurt me. But the thing is I needed that emotion that night. I needed him to be more caring when he told me, I needed us to hug and cry and pay tribute to the 11 months we shared. I did not need him to devalue who I am as a person. I never deserved any of that. I do think I am getting better. I think I finally realize that he never really loved me. He was rebounding on a relationship that I knew nothing about when I first met him. I didn't learn about her until much later on. She shared my name. She became someone that would cause me great distress. Because he had hid her, because he had actually been in a relationship with her on facebook (something he never did with me) and because when pushed he admitted he had been hurt when she ended things. Just a few months later we met in a very romantic setting in St. John. How could we ever have a normal relationship built on those kind of expectations. I know in the beginning I was very clear. I was open about all my hurts, what I was looking for, marriage children, everything. He pretended to be on that same page. I think in the first six months he was still caught up in the fun, the lust, the spark, the butterflies. Along the way life would test our relationship in ways neither one of us asked for. Some of them were because of choices that I made. Regardless of the hard times, if you really love someone you stay with them. You don't leave when the going gets tough. It's like that Marylin Monroe quote "But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best." What if we had been married, what if it had been worse and I had cancer or got in a serious accident. I guess knowing now is better then knowing then. I do give him credit. He did some great things when we were dating, he wasn't all terrible and I do believe that he truly cared. But caring is not the same as loving. I know the difference and I wish he had known it too. He said he loved me every night, he even invented a little finger wave that was just for us, to say I love you, without having to say it. I thought finally a man who can really love me. I am having to come to terms with the fact that he is not the man I thought he was, and not the man I fell in love with. I appreciate that he cared about me, but don't continue in a relationship at our ages if you aren't doing anything more then playing around. That being said he is using the fact that I was older and ready for a family against me. I certainly did share with him my desire to be a mother and wife from the first week we met. I shared with him my heartbreak when friends struggled with infertility. I was scared. I am 36. I might not get to have a child of my own, and what's worse I don't even know if I can. I don't mind adopting. Trying and not being able to conceive and then adopting is OK. But I may never get the choice to see if I could even have a baby. And that breaks my heart. But I never. Ever. Ever. Put pressure on him to rush and have a baby with me. I don't have a job, I don't have a place of my own, I don't even have a car. I am certainly not at a point right now where I could be a wife or a mother. I did see that future with him. Like two or three years down the road. I have been reaching out to friends and sharing the love that they are sharing with me. I love facebook for those amazing connections to friends of old, who haven't seen you in almost 20 years and yet they reach out to say you are strong, you can do this. I am thinking of you. They may never know how much each one of them has meant to me in this time. A sweet card from an Aunt, a phone call from a friend, a text, a facebook message, an email.. they all say the same thing. And gave me love when I felt no love in my heart. Men and women alike have stretched out their arms to help lift me up and carry me over the bumpy path. And if they can show me that kind of love the least I can do is learn to dance in the rain that is pouring down on me. The storm can't last forever and after 9 months of downpours surely I am just a bit closer to the rainbow on the other side.