It’s Christmas, again, and I’ve been sitting here evaluating the past year of my life. It’s been a doozie, and I’m still reeling from the events of 2000 a.d. I know that I said, above, that I most likely wouldn’t write about the personal things on this page…but, I’m a woman, and so I reserve the right to change my mind now and again. I've been so blessed in the last 6 months. I know that God has been here. There has been a darkness over my life, lately, and I’m coming out of it only by grace. I'm taken care of with an adequate home, a job I adore, friends who love me, a body that's finally responding to all the attention I've been trying to give it, a dream that's becoming reality (I hit my Marine Corps weight last week!!!!), and ... the big one:

This past year, I was given the truly great and rare privilege of meeting someone who touches my soul.

I married young…really young. I had never seen what love can be - how simple and easy it can be if it's true. I loved my husband. I truly did. I gave him all of me, and I tried for 6 years to “make it work.” The problems that plagued my marriage were there because I was with a man who loved being married but did not love his wife. He did not know me. He did not understand me. And…he never would have.

My husband was not and is not a bad person. I am not a bad person, either. We simply don’t belong together. We chose each other for simple enough reasons. He wanted to grow up. Marriage was on his list of things to accomplish for his life, and he saw, in me, a woman who could cook, mother, and make a home with him. It was a dry and un-passionate decision on his part, I think. I have no doubt that he loves me in that way that you end up loving the people who are in your life and in your family. When we were young, it may have been exciting for him that he didn’t understand me. I was “mysterious” to him or whatever. I don’t know. Whatever it was…it didn’t last forever. For me, I saw in my husband the first really attractive and stable man who ever “wanted” me. He was gainfully employed and just incredibly easy on the eyes. He was responsible and he was the type of man who got things done. He took care of me in a material sense. He saw something that needed to be done, and he got it done. I admired that in him, and I was swept away by the idea that someone so attractive and so “grown up” wanted to be with me. Somewhere in the 8th month of our first year of marriage, I knew that it was a mistake. I spent the next 5 years trying to fix whatever that illusive “thing” was that was wrong. I was the only one fixing, though. He didn’t see a problem. When we fought or when I cried, he would be concerned, but as soon as the drama was over, and as soon as things settled back into routine…well then that meant that the problem was solved, right? So…then he would go on, comfortable in his life. That marriage box was checked off. The wife had been obtained and there were bigger and more important things to concern himself with – such as career and money.

I spent a lot of time lonely and some of that time was actually spent alone. My husband was/is a workaholic. When he was out earning money and “doing his part” to support our home, he felt like he was being productive – like he was fulfilling his duty and being a good adult. I buried myself in my own work and tried to find satisfaction in being the “best” at whatever it was that I was doing to earn my half. That never worked for me, though. I love work and I love being good at my work…but my life motivations are not at the office. They are at home. I’m a passionate person and I was married to a man who doesn’t understand passion. I need someone with a fire inside of him. My husband needs someone with serenity inside of her. So…we don’t fit. We never did and we don’t now and we never will. That breaks my heart, but there it is. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I can’t fix “it,” because fixing it would mean that one of us would have to become someone we are not.

Somewhere in the neighborhood of working on a half a year ago, I met Ashley. I never saw Ashley in a romantic light, at first. I was unhappy in my marriage, but I most certainly was not looking for anything to replace it. I spoke to Ashley every day online and we talked about everything from USMC boot camp to the best ways to cook chicken. He was someone to break the loneliness. He was always there to talk to me, and he always made me laugh. We began to find little oddball things that we have in common and we found a LOT of them. There were nights when I was just crying my eyes out, but Ashley didn’t know. We would chitchat about stupid things and, by the end of the conversation, I was smiling and comfortable and happy. It was magic. No matter what kind of dramatic crisis I was dealing with for the day, I could watch Ashley type things to me, or listen to his voice on the phone…and it all got better. When my marriage began to seriously crumble, he was there to encourage me in my endeavors to patch it up. When I cried myself to sleep at night because my husband wouldn't come home, he was there to listen in silence until I fell asleep. When I was afraid that I would lose my home because of money issues when my husband left, he was there to ease the panic and to remind me that it wasn't as bad as it seemed. Then, when things began to look better, and I realized that I had made it through that "worst" part, he was there to smile and tell me that he had known it would turn out well all along. Now, when I’ve realized that I’m so attached to Ashley that it frightens me, he’s still here and he reminds me every day that he wasn’t looking for me, either. We both agree that the timing stinks, but time has a way of making it’s own schedule with very little regard to the petty concerns of man.

Sure, I think about how it will look to other people if Ashley and I “hook up.” I think about how many people will whisper behind my back that I left my husband “for” Ashley…which is absurd. I know that there will be the whole “he’s just a rebound” thing to plague me for a while. At the end of the day, though, I don’t care about any of that. My friends know what I’m about. My family knows that I’m stronger than all of that. The people who matter in my life know better than to believe that I would give up on a promise that I made in front of my family in the presence of God…just so that I could go do something “naughty” with another man. Ha ha ha. It makes me laugh out loud just to even think of how off-target those kinds of accusations are. Ashley cannot be cheapened in my estimation by that type of advice or admonition. He is not and never was and never will be “just” a rebound romance or something “wild” that I wanted to try out now that I’m a single woman. He is not an excuse to desert my marriage. He is not the reason my marriage failed. He is not someone that I want to hop into the sack with so that I can forget my troubles.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, Ashley and I have developed a friendship – a bond – that is just unreal. I don't know if I’ll get to keep it forever...but I do know that it's honest and worthy and really rare. I know that I have been witnessing what can happen when someone gives to me of himself. I’ve never had that. What Ashley gives me isn’t material. He isn’t offering me a home. He isn’t offering me money or things. He isn’t offering me stability or fairy tales or an easy ride. What he gives to me are little pieces of his heart. He gives me little pieces of his life. All those little pieces add up to one hell of a big thing. It’s amazing. I use that word in reference to Ashley a lot, which bugs me because – you know – I’m a writer, and I don’t like to repeat myself. It can’t be helped, though. “Amazing” is the word that fits. Ashley astounds me on a regular basis.

I’m not really sure why I wrote this today. It’s not very “good,” and it doesn’t really make a point, does it? Ha ha ha. I suppose maybe I wrote it because it’s Christmastime and I’m thinking about all the people in my life. This is my first holiday without my husband in a long time…and I figure that maybe I should be unhappy about that, but I’m not. I feel like maybe I should be suffering from sentiment or pain…and I’m not. I’m happy. I’m good. I’m with people who love me for me. That’s the best feeling in the world, right?

Ashley is not here. He lives a very long way away. There may come a day when it’s decided that we want to pursue something that would necessitate relocation…but for now, I’m just grateful to have Ashley in my life. He is my friend, and he is the very best kind of friend. He’s the kind of friend who loves me. He’s the kind of friend who cares about what happens to me. And…he is the kind of friend who wants, very much, for me to love him and care about what happens to him. Right now…that’s all I need from him. I’ve got that, and so, for me, all is right with the world.

Enim Ashley: Tu es mei pulchra lumen.

From the Pen of Aspen Lowood
December 23, 2000
3:57pm, MST









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