Monday, March 12, 2018

12th Anniversary

Have you noticed that I only "blog" once or twice a year? It takes me more time to figure out how to log-in to this account than it does to write something.

But here I am. Midnight rolled by last night and I hit my yearly melancholy missing Kim.

I'm in a strange place these days.

I could get married again but everything is different this time.

When I met Kim I had just moved to Gulfport. I had gone through my 20's desperate for a girlfriend and hopeful for a wife someday but the opportunities in a small town were limited and maybe I wasn't that much of a "catch" back then anyway.

Then I met Kim and I knew within a couple months that she was the one. Maybe I knew the first time I saw her.  One of my favorite memories of my late Dad was the first time he met her. I guess we had been dating for about 3 months at that point when my Dad and stepmom visited me on the Coast. My Dad pulled me aside and said something like, "Well Son, I think you've found the one."  He could see it. He was right.

That's part of what's so different between then and now. Then, I knew. Now, I don't.

A lot of people around me tell me that those "feelings" don't matter. They tell me that I should marry, essentially, because I'm not getting any younger and it's not good to be alone. Even if I remind myself that being alone isn't necessarily the same as being lonely, they are not wrong.

When I first started talking about marriage with Kim she gave me the "out"- she told me we should break it off sooner rather than later because her prospects for a long-life were slim. That's when I told her I'd rather live some of my life with her than any of it without her.  I guess my thinking process on marriage is tainted by that line all these years later because what I want in marriage is not just to be with someone I can live with, but to be with someone I can't live without. The former isn't that hard to find, the latter is maybe once in a lifetime. I don't know.

Maybe I've set myself up for something unrealistic. Maybe someone I can't live without, someone that checks all my boxes, doesn't exist- apparently not even in my head since I can't articulate who or what that person is.

It makes sense that I should be married, I can't deny that. I tell people all the time that if I was married I'd like to adopt or foster some of the kids we minister with. There's a little girl at one of the orphanages right now that if I got married this week I'd probably start trying to adopt next week. Sometimes when I say that out loud, I feel inside that I must not really mean it... if I did then I'd do something about it. If I really cared about that kid then I'd get married. No internal pressure, right?

See how easy it is to get melancholy and worse on a day like today.