Not really looking for anything here but to vent my sadness to people I feel a connection too, so please don't read too much into this it is just my need to get this out.

So I will start this off by saying I am a terrible guy as far as relationships are concerned. I was married once and by the past tense you can probably tell it did not work out. I was brought up in a broken home where I really didn't know my dad more than the occasional time from about 8 to 12. My parents were split and though my dad was only a few hours away he was a selfish man so though I saw him I never really knew him at that time in my life. The messages I got from him then were not the greatest, money is everything and marriage is a crock. "Sleep with every woman you can and never get married" that was his advice. He came around and became a great father once he quite drinking, he did that after he commited arson while drunk and realized how fucked up his life had become. That is when I found out who he was, just in time to lose him to prison. But as far as my relationship psyche was concerned it wasn't the message I should have gotten. Add in a mother with fibromyalgia and working nights as a nurse that ment I was raising my self. All through high school I was sleeping around and never really was able to keep a realationship working for more than 3 or 4 months. Towards the end I finally started to get my shit together and was really connecting with a girl named Jess who I had known for about 2 years. Then the Army came in and I was gone. Jess and I stayed in touch and stayed close. Hell she was the real reason I came home. Everyone who knew us including her parents thought that though we were not actually together we would most definatly be married. Too bad that after three years in the Army I made a poor choice and got married way too soon to my now ex-wife. Less than a year later we were looking to get divorced and I was off to Iraq. Jess and I still talked but she was...

Not really looking for anything here but to vent my sadness to people I feel a connection too, so please don't read too much into this it is just my need to get this out.

So I will start this off by saying I am a terrible guy as far as relationships are concerned. I was married once and by the past tense you can probably tell it did not work out. I was brought up in a broken home where I really didn't know my dad more than the occasional time from about 8 to 12. My parents were split and though my dad was only a few hours away he was a selfish man so though I saw him I never really knew him at that time in my life. The messages I got from him then were not the greatest, money is everything and marriage is a crock. "Sleep with every woman you can and never get married" that was his advice. He came around and became a great father once he quite drinking, he did that after he commited arson while drunk and realized how fucked up his life had become. That is when I found out who he was, just in time to lose him to prison. But as far as my relationship psyche was concerned it wasn't the message I should have gotten. Add in a mother with fibromyalgia and working nights as a nurse that ment I was raising my self. All through high school I was sleeping around and never really was able to keep a realationship working for more than 3 or 4 months. Towards the end I finally started to get my shit together and was really connecting with a girl named Jess who I had known for about 2 years. Then the Army came in and I was gone. Jess and I stayed in touch and stayed close. Hell she was the real reason I came home. Everyone who knew us including her parents thought that though we were not actually together we would most definatly be married. Too bad that after three years in the Army I made a poor choice and got married way too soon to my now ex-wife. Less than a year later we were looking to get divorced and I was off to Iraq. Jess and I still talked but she was with someone else. I had hurt her terribly and I will never forgive myself for that. While in Iraq I get into my second longest non-marriage relationship, a whopping 9 months. Now besides these I have had at least 35 other realtionships since leaving for the Army. Not very good to say the least. Well after Iraq I came home and had two more relationships only to be sent back to Iraq for 4 months. Ya home less than 5 weeks and two different woman. Still I am unaware at the time of how bad this really is. Once I am back for good the numbers keep going up and I'm slipping further and further into deppresion and PTSD. Then I meet Michelle at my first Winter Coronet here in Oertha. We court and start a relationship things are really great but I keep doing things to cause problems and I just can't stop no matter how hard I try. Then we go home to surprise my mother for her 50th Birthday. That is when I introduce Michelle to everyone from my pre-Army life. Everyone loves her just as much as I do and everyone tells me to marry her and for some reason it makes me start doing more and more to cause problems. And I find my self thinking about how the grass would be greener on the otherside. All the woman I haven't been with and the ones I had before. Things start to slide a little more. I move back to Anchorage with her and change my whole life to be there with her. I keep loseing focus of what I have and keep doing things to cause problems. I just can't stop though I want too. Then my Father dies. When we had been in Michigan to surprise my mom I took Michelle to meet him and asked him point blank if he had been drinking again. He said yes and I flipped and told him to never talk to me agian till he wasn't drinking. We had talked three times since then once in anger and two joyously after he had stopped drinking. His death was suicide and though I had prepared myself for it for sometime it was still a shock. It turned my life on its ear and I am still finding things I am doing because of it. A month after our return from the funeral I broke it off with Michelle. I had driven us apart out of what I now know was fear of her leaving me and hurting me like my dad did. We worked some of it out and were making a long distance (Fairbanks to Anchorage) go of it again. I thought I had gotten myself back together but really I was a wreck. PTSD worse than ever and depression nearly killing me. I was lying to people when they asked if I was alright. Michelle came to visit over christmas and it was terrible. I was phisically ill I was so unhappy while she was there and I didn't know why. Add to it her going into emergency surgery while there for what they thought was a ruptured appendix but turned out to be something else. After she went home I made the ultimate mistake and really screwed up on New Years eve. It was the end of us. I woke up then, not from sleep but to my problems. I went for help and got it from the VA in counsiling and Medication to help. I wasn't facing what I had become based on those early experiances with my dad's relationship advice. By the time I realised that I had lost the second woman in my life who I could have trully spent the rest of my days with it was too late. During that time she had begged me to try again and I had said no for selfish reasons and tried to keep sleeping about thinking it would be better. Well once I realised why this was all happening and was able to start doing something about it she was already with Jarrod. He was her former long term lover and he and I had dated the same girl a few years prior. I knew that as much as I still loved her it was wrong to interfer. She kept trying to see if I would make a large move and take her back and I sat back thinking that surly he would not make her happy or would screw up. I just couldn't bring myself to interfere with her happiness for my own sake when I wasn't sure I could keep her happy or my fears from killing it again. Well since then (recently) I have been faking a life. Dating a bit and keeping a smile tacked lighty about me. On friday I asked her to have lunch with me on Sunday (today) this means a 3 hour each way drive to meet in the middle and she agreed. Well that night Jerrod preposed to her and she said yes. I found out yesterday after work and an SCA demo at the fair. I thought I had been shot. I was told by my house sister, also Michelles house sister because Michelle was not sure how to tell me and didn't want a blow up over the phone or in person. She had to ask if it meant we couldn't have lunch then last night called herself. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done to tell her congratulations. It nearly killed me inside. Now I am writting this to try and let some of this go. Instead I still listening to the rain falling hard on the roof matching my tears falling from my chin. I go ;later this morning to have lunch with her for my Birthday and I am scared to death that I will not be able to contain my feelings. I just want her to be happy but it is hard to know that I will be watching the second woman of my life that I should have been right too drive away to him and from me for the last time. I love her and have lost her for my own damn fears.