A bit of back story before we get started. Some things that need to be said before you can really understand my point of view. My life started out simple enough, a standard family just like the rest. Mother and father both with prior divorces, another in the future, and not to stop there. Living in a broken home was always something that I grew up with. Neither parent ever showing less affection than the other, but always fighting for their child.
As I got older, moving from school to school, and under a different roof from year to year, I realized my life was never very stationary. There was never time to make friends, no reason to speak or open up to others. When you do that you only go home to find that you would never see them again because, you were moving away, always trying to get away from the last place you had been. In my younger years all I did was watch the people around me, constantly learning how people would interact with each other. Wondering what it would be like if it was me, how I would handle an given situation, and putting myself in the shoes any individual. It wasn't until I was about to start high school, that I told the judge, if I was to move once again into my mother's home, that I wanted to be able to stay at one school, and have a chance to go through high school, and to spend all four years at a single one, and not split up over many. By court order my mother could not move, so that I would stay in the same district, and go to one school for the entire term. My father as well, was not allowed to settle more than thirty miles away, still with joint custody, hand to be nearby whenever I wanted to see him. It wasn't until my sophomore year, that I began to open up, thrust myself upon a group a people, and tried to fit in. Gain a few friends here and there, finding myself, and coming out of my shell. By my junior year I continued to the people around me, still learning as I did before. Never leaving myself vulnerable, but always open to a compassion that I never had before. I would constantly look upon the friendships and relationships that others had, always wanting to be them. I spent enough time pondering what it would be like if it was me, knowing I could do better. I'd seen enough of my parents in their relationships, knowing that it wouldn't be the way I would do things.
By my junior year in high school, I had known enough girls to understand which ones I wanted. But of course I was never a jock, never the cute guy that they all wanted. I wasn't invisible, because nearly the whole school knew me for one reason or another. I was that silly smart kid, or the class clown. If you ever met me, you would remember me. There were many times when people would call out my name, and I simply wouldn't know who they were, but I must have touched their life in some way or another. By that point I never cared what people thought of me, I had always seen people trying to pretend they were something that they were not. I saw these people time and time again, try to get ahead in life, and relationships, masking who they really were. Don't get me wrong, it would usually work, but only for awhile.
By my senior year, I was still that awkward person that I knew I would grow up to be. Everyone knew I was different, I knew it as well. That is what I knew made me special, even at a young age. I learned from being alone for many of the early years of my life, who I was, and the type of person I wanted to be. I didn't judge others for the way they treated women, but I did grow a strong compassion for them. Maybe that was why I ended up being the guy all the girls would come to vent about their boyfriends, but never getting the chance to show them how things could be. It was in these situation that I still could not make a move, I would just listen, and again learn what I knew I didn't want to be.
This continued on for awhile after I graduated, by this time my family was behind me. Mother moved out of that area once I turned 18, father eventually ended up in another state. Sill just me, with a few good friends out of school, doing everything as planned. I still sat alone many nights, wishing that I wasn't "alone" always wondering if the compassion that lived deep inside would ever be let out. I knew that in this society it was me who had to gather the confidence to approach the girls, and that if I wanted to be the right guy for one, to try and understand how much compassion I could show to one female. The opportunity wasn't going to come up and hit me in the face, until that is exactly what she did. Of course at my age, not having been with many girls, I wont lie, you end up becoming a bit of a pervert. Like I said before, I spent most of my life watching and learning from people by their actions. I couldn't help when an attractive girl crossed my path my eyes did a bit of wondering. Of course you try to go unnoticed, but when one walks up to you and slaps you in the face because of it, it is safe to say you're not as good at it as you think. Now of course you would think this is a bad situation, you eye a girl up and down, she doesn't like it and hits you in the face and inquires what it was you were doing. Me being me, and all my past with nothing to lose simply states "When a girl like you walks into a room, you're going to have to understand that a guy like me is going to break a few of God's rules." In my head, I assumed that girls wanted honesty. Lying never got anybody anywhere, so truth was the only way to go for me. So full unadulterated honesty couldn't hurt anybody right? Well, when she hit me again after that comment, yeah, it starts to hurt. To eliminate the details, my assumptions were still correct. Apparently girls don't initially respond well to pure honesty, but, all the lies they are used to hearing is still much worse. We eventually started dating, and she really turned out to be a lot less violent than I had initially thought. She was beautiful, there was no doubt about that. She was always the girl in a room full of other attractive women, but every time I turned my head away, it was always her that caught my eye. I know the more you spend time with someone you start to mimic them. You may have experienced this with a close friend to which you steal each others catch phase from time to time. That is exactly what we started to be, always together, finishing each other's sentences like a pair of twins in simple conversation. I couldn't ever describe what this girl had for me in simple words, you just had to see it.
All the years of wondering what it would be like had finally come true, and when I looked into her eyes under the moons light, I could see the feeling I had for her looking right back at me. Three years we spent together, we were not wealthy by any means, but we both knew that being together made us the richest people we knew. All of our friends agreed, you always have somebody that tries to question what you were doing, yet for us, nobody disagreed. After awhile we knew that the laughs and moments we shared together would never go away, we were always with each other in person, or thinking about each other while we were apart. When I asked her to marry me, I told her that I would never love another girl the same way I loved her. For the next few months after she said yes, we didn't need to plan much of a wedding, we both knew that we were going to be together soon, and that flowers, colors, dresses, and food were only simple decisions for something that was so big for the both of us. Nothing changed with each day we were together, nothing ever changed the way I would look at her. Each new day I saw her, was no different than the first time she walked into a room, and promptly slapped me in the face. Those things still happened from time to time, but they always ended with mutual smiles. Holding her in my arms just made me feel free, like nothing else in the world mattered, to me nothing else did. I couldn't wait to see her walk down the aisle, and she couldn't wait to stand before me and hold my hand. You never truly know you love someone, until you can shed tears over loosing them, even if you haven't lost them at all. That is how I knew she was the one. I couldn't bare the thought of not having her, I wasn't going to lose her the way I saw other men, even in my own family, lose their relationships. I did everything right in my eyes, and when she would come up behind me, and hold her body close to mine, I knew that the things I was doing were they way they should be.
It wasn't until one night before the weeding that things changed. One week prior to the day of our wedding, she didn't show up for the rehearsal. I knew this wasn't like her, so I wasn't worried. Until I received a phone call from the hospital, the girl that was my everything was killed in a car accident on her way to see me. The last moment we had together was a hug and a kiss, she told me that even though we had the rehearsal for the wedding, we would just wing it as we had always done together in the past. being ourselves is what brought us together, so why practice something that isn't really us being ourselves. I cried every time before that date, whenever I had a thought of losing her, in a bad dream, or even sitting next to her on a plane, for fear of what could happen. I didn't cry that night when I heard the news. Maybe I was too devastated to really accept what had happen. Or maybe it was because I had thought so much about her, that I knew one day one of us would grow old, and die. "Until death do us part," I was ready to be there for her until that happen. Maybe I didn't cry because I knew I already was, she was there for me, all the way until her death. Maybe I didn't because I knew that every day I was with her, I showed her happiness, maybe because every event that flashed through my head had brought a smile. I had no regrets with her, I treated her with every ounce of compassion I had, and she knew it. I told her everything I ever wanted to tell her, every time I thought of it, and thought of her, she heard about it. I knew the way she thought about me, and that only brought me closer to her. So maybe that is why I couldn't cry when I heard she was gone. She brought joy into my life, and that part of her was never going away. I told her when I asked her to marry me that there would never be another girl out there that I would feel the same way about.
After a few years, back to being single once more, I realized that I would never want her to be alone. I was in her life, because I saw a girl that didn't deserve to be alone. She saw in me, a boy that didn't want to be alone. I would never want her to be alone in this world, at a young age had it have been me. I knew deep down that she would have wanted me to go on to be just as much a part of everyone else's life, as I was hers. To make that difference, that we made for each other, just by being ourselves. Living life the way we saw fit for ourselves, not trying to be people that fit into a society, but making things fit around us. Our lives crossed paths, and the time that our lines ran alongside one another was beautiful. It took awhile to move back out into the world, to open up and tell people my story. I realized that she was never the type to miss an opportunity, and from that I learned to always keep my eyes open to my surroundings.
I have since found another woman, with which I have two wonderful daughters, just as beautiful as the other, and they are everything I live for. My wife is another miracle that has happened to me. She is more to me than I could ever imagine. I am happy, just like I was in the past. I have no regrets. God, Fate, or whoever is in charge of our lives, never gives us something we can't handle. I used to think that my life was worse than the rest, but there is always someone out there whom has experienced the same. It is my belief that things happen to me, so that I can reach out to better help others.
I will always remember the look on Ashley's face when I told her that I would never love another woman the same way I loved her. She would just smiled and respond "That's good, each of us is unique, we each deserve a different kind of love."