Last night I found out that the guy I had dated throughout most of college, and whom I was certain I was going to marry until just a few years ago, was married recently to someone else. This "someone else" is a woman with whom he'd admittedly had at least an emotional affair while we were dating. She is someone he began to talk about all of the time as our relationship drew to a close. She is also 22 years older than he.
That being said, I don't know her, and I'm sure she is a perfectly nice lady; she convinced my ex to start going to church, which honestly, was more than I was able to do in our many, many years of discussion. I truly hope that he's happy, which was all I ever wanted for him anyway, and I wish them nothing but the best.
None of this, of course, changes the fact that I couldn't fall asleep until three this morning, crying and burying my swollen eyes into the pillow, thinking about the plans that he and I had made together, and how he could talk such an incredible game about our life together, our future children, and growing old, but he just couldn't commit.
I knew from the day that we met in the Centre post office when I was headed home from CCF with my good friend, Vanessa, that there was going to be something special between us. After he shook my hand and left, I looked at Vanessa and said, "I think I'm gonna marry him."
What followed in the years after was a relationship tumultuous enough to have its own soap opera, with intense ups and downs, multiple break ups, break downs, and reunifications. Everyone in my life had an opinion about this guy, and I chose to ignore most of them. One thing was certain: the intensity of our relationship made it a very passionate one, and the way I felt about him was unlike anything I'd ever experienced, or have yet to experience again.
When I moved to DC and he was in his last year of law school, things heated up quickly. We talked on the phone and through IM and e-mail. He helped me through sadness after I had declared my love for a good friend. I never will forget our conversation on Valentine's Day 2008. He said, "Jess, someday he's going to realize what he missed out on with you. I have."
Before I realized how quickly things were moving, he was visting me for weeks at a time. Things felt so natural with him because we knew each other so well... and the undeniable passion was still there. He could communicate volumes to me with just one look, and it's something that I miss to this day. We made each other laugh and he knew what I was thinking before I even opened my mouth.
The days between each visit grew longer, and we were talking marriage and children. Through all of the serious scheming and planning, I knew something just wasn't quite right. He would often express his insecurity about the fact that we both had disabilities, and how he could see all he hated of himself in me. This, in turn, made me insecure, and I questioned his love for me. He accused me of being too "results-oriented" and said that if I was just patient, our plans would eventually happen.
It was then that I began to suspect he didn't really want to marry me, because as everyone who has read "He's Just Not That Into You" knows, when a guy wants to be with you, he will. Meanwhile, he was lying to others, including his parents, about where he was when he flew to visit me... and I didn't find out until later that he had actually made up a fictious identity for a girlfriend he claimed to be seeing while visiting me... but she was nothing like me at all.
I told him that I would do what I needed to do, move wherever I needed to move to be with him. He was the love of my life. The more I begged him to just tell me what he wanted, the less he was around, and the only real signs of his presence in my life were the playlists he'd created on my Rhapsody.com account and the sporadic charges he made to my debit/credit cards; some with my permission, some without.
After not talking with him for two weeks, our last conversation was on gchat. He told me he couldn't give me the love and support I needed, and that was that. Years of my love, time, and effort were brushed aside with the stroke of an Enter-key and one instant message.
I tried calling him a few times after that, crying when I heard his voicemail, but never leaving a message. I also e-mailed him to try to get back some of the money he owed me. He promised he'd send it. I sent him my address three times, and I never saw a dime.
Call me crazy, but last night when I found out that not only was he married, he was also honeymooning in Ireland (which, incidentally, requires money) I felt more than a little hurt. It was as though the thousands of dollars I'd spent for him and his well-being meant nothing. Not only that, our time together meant nothing. It meant so little in fact that he couldn't even tell me himself that he was marrying a person who in my eyes was "the other woman."
And what did she have that I didn't? Certainly not more love. I'm convinced no one will ever care for him the way I did. But she did have something. One thing. Normalcy. She didn't have a disability.
I remember a day when we walked to PF Chang's from my apartment in Fairfax, VA, and we had to sit outside at one of the benches to wait for our table. In a rare moment, he reached over and grabbed my hand, lifted it, and kissed it gently. I smiled at him, tearing up a little. He was happy to be seen with me. Once we'd eaten and we were back at my place, relaxing on the living room couch, he started talking about how proud he was that he'd held my hand in public, how he'd had to think about it first. "You know, everyone expects we'll be together, because we both have disabilities, and I don't like that."
What he said might sound repulsive, but it's actually not as foreign as one might think. Many of my friends with disabilities have expressed to me that they would rather date or marry someone without a disability, someone more "normal" than they, if not for more than the simple fact that they want to be seen as attractive by a "normal" person.
I've never really understood that mentality. Isn't normal relative? Doesn't everyone have their quirks? I've never made having a disability or lacking a disability a requirement for my mate, and why should I? Their differences don't define them, just as mine don't define me. And sure, an able-bodied guy might be able to help me with more physical tasks.... but no one is going to know what it's like to have a disability better than another person who has one. There are superficial pros and cons to either side.
What matters to me is how a man treats me, how well we converse, and if he can make me smile. I won't lie and say that I don't want to be found attractive by able-bodied guys either. I do, but if I had a nickel for everytime some guy compared me to his grandma for one reason or another, I'd be a filthy rich woman.
Really, all I want is this: someone who sees the me I see; the me inside--my heart and soul. The person I really am.... because he may wake up with a wife on crutches one day or a wife in a wheelchair the next, but I'm still going to be an avid reader who sleeps on the left side of the bed, loves her chihuahua more than most people, and could eat her weight in guacamole. Those are the things that make me normal... nothing else.
