I Kinda Always Knew I'd End Up Your Ex-Girlfriend...

For those of you who haven't been in the dating world for a while, let me forewarn you: It is a scary, annoying place that makes you want to do crazy things like drink to make dates more bearable, keep friends on back-up to call you to get you out of emergency situation (thank you, Sam V., you are a lifesaver,) and consider punching grown men much larger than you in their big stupid faces for some of the comments they let fly.
I'm no good at this, to be honest. I've always been the girl with the back up. I know that a lot of people don't understand that or are like "whaaaat?" but it's true. When I was in high school or college, I'd break up with a guy and then there was another I'd know before I broke up with him that there was another I could start dating if I broke up with the current. Thing is, when I got married, I didn't need a back up. He was my forever. I didn't need someone else because I was his and he was mine and it was going to be a life-long devoted love...'cept he didn't get that memo. Whoops? He had lots of backups but broke the cardinal rule of having a back up. You don't touch them until the current is gone. Again, I say, whoops? Dumbass. Anyway.
So I've been tossed, less than gently, back into the world of dating. I sort of feel like I'm running an obstacle course. There are easy parts of rest between where I meet someone and I talk to them and things are easy because we're just getting to know each other. Then we jump into the mudpit. Normally, I make it out, but they get swallowed up by the mud on the way through. I trudge on, climb out, and down I go under the barbed wire. I lay low, belly to the ground, and crawl through and pick up my next teammate on the way, but when I make it out the otherside, I look back to see them caught up in the briars and I shake my head. I grab the rope and stick my feet firmly to the wall and start to climb, someone gives me a gentle push and I turn to thank them and see them climbing with me, but when I reach the top, they're still at the bottom realizing they have a fear of heights. By now, I wonder if anyone is going to stick this out. I drop off the other side, see the end is near, hear the bangs and see the flashes, so I drop down and low crawl across the live fire, finally I see that someone else has made it this far, they're crawling beside me, they are gonna make it to the end with me, and then... he stand up before we're clear of the firing. Sigh. Oh well. I finish the course alone. Break time.
I'm not sure what it takes to find the guy who is right for me and who wants me and wants to stick it out with me, but I wish I did. There are so many who talk a big game about wanting to have a wife and get married and have a family, but the problem is I don't think they realize that means that they have to overlook the flaws that come with some women just like we over look the many, many, many flaws of the men we care about.
Someone told me once that every girl falls off the ledge, and when they fall, the right hero swoops down to catch them.
I guess my problem is that I see a lot of heroes talking about their capes and how cool they are and how fast they can fly, but I get closer to the concrete with every second they spend at the top of the building talking.
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought."
--Henri Bergson
"A man who has to be convinced to act before he acts is not a man of action. You must act as you breathe."
--George Clemenceau
I want a man of action. Talk is cheap. Words come easy. I want the man who says what he means, and means what he says.
Before me lies a sea of faces, but who among them will stand out?

You Love Me But You Don't Know Who I Am, So Let Me Go, Let Me Go...

I had a dream last night about my soon-to-be ex-husband. I had a dream he had, for some reason, come down to where I am to visit and hang out and was in complete denial of ever receiving divorce papers. He was shocked to see me without my wedding ring and instead wearing a ring on my right hand that, for some reason in the dream wasn't the eternity ring my biological mother gave me, but was intead a ring promising to move on and he somehow knew it. He grabbed my hand and tried to look at it and I pulled away and asked him not to touch me, and then left an envelope with divorce papers for him and he cried, and though I felt sad for him, I kept walking away.
That's how I felt last week when some of his friends made me aware he supposedly sits at work staring at the divorce papers all day. I am sorry for him, but not because I'm leaving. Not because I am sad I am leaving, but because I am sad it took him this long to realize I'm not coming back. It took until now to realize he can't give his heart and body to other women and then still expect me to stay around and wait and hope he will realize he is wrong. He's dragged my name through the mud. He has tried numerous time to hurt me since this all started. He has done all he can to be hateful, spiteful, mean, and malicious, but I am apparently supposed to play the fool and still take him back.
There are bridges that could never be repaired. His lies to his family are so far gone, they'd never accept me, and after how some of them treated me, I'd never want to be a part of their lives again. His new friends, without knowing me and only knowing the lies he has filled them with, have aided him in his cruelties and his harassment, and so I'd never want to be around them.
But those things aside, looking into his eyes when he came home for R&R and blatantly lied to me about the girl he now calls his girlfriend. Knowing he could look me, as his wife, in the face and try to tell me she was just a girl who meant nothing, just a person to spend time with since I wouldn't let him touch me when I'd found out, just a girl his friends introduced him to. Knowing, after I found the receipt for condoms in the car, the hand written directions to her house on the envelope to the card I bought him, the address of her house written on the back of a torn piece from a letter I'd sent him over deployment... And then to look me in the eyes and say he never touched her, but see the only two remaining condoms from a box of twelve fall from his things...and then me picking them up, handing them back, scooting away from the table and getting my things and going to the car.
I offered to go to counseling. I offered to stick around, if only he would stop. If only he would give me time to heal. If only...but I did not mean enough to wait. I waited eight months, but I was not worth two weeks.
I am worth an eternity to someone.
So sign the damn papers, and let me go.

Oh, Whoa, Oh, It's The Sweetest Thing...

Here's a tad bit of history, for those who know me less-than-well: I was adopted by my grandparents when I was ten months old. That gives me a sort of dual-role in my family. I am seemingly relate-able to both the grandchildren-aged group and the child-aged group. I'm 24, soon to be 25. My "brothers and sisters" are ranging in age from 37-43 (not counting my one biological little sister, who is 21) and my "cousins/nieces/nephews" range in age from 14-25. I am closer to the age group of the "grandchildren" but closer in how I see myself to the "children." Its a bit of an awkward situation and confusing for anyone who's first introduced to our family.
Anyway, I give this history to make a point. Minus the 3 who are still in middle school or high school, I am the only of my family to have no children. I was married for over three years. Unfortunately, I technically still am because for some reason the man who felt it so necessary to tell me he didn't love me anymore and felt so strongly about this that he proceeded to sleep with anything that spread its legs, still hasn't signed divorce papers. But I digress. Though married over three years, I still have no children of my own.
I didn't want any at the time. I truly didn't, and perhaps that was God's way of making sure I didn't have a permanent connection to this man. The idea of having a child right now having to go through this struggle with me...I'd feel horrible. I repeatedly said while I was married that when I could walk through the baby aisle at Wal-mart and get more excited there than I do when I walk through electronics, I'd know I was ready. I meant that. Honestly, I still do. However...
With everyone around me having children, with everyone around me creating these beautiful little miniature versions of themselves, I can feel the tug at my heart strongs. I can feel the burn in my heart, throat and behind my eyes asking myself if I am ever going to have that.
"To be a wife and a mother," is always my answer when someone asks "What do you want most in life?" Not "to be rich" or "to have a huge house." Just to be a wife and a mother. I know that I am "only 24" but being "only 24" and seeing the whole world around you seem to be moving on towards the thing you want most, and some of them not even appreciating it... It's like a quick subtle swipe of a nice along my side. I don't realize it happens until i feel the sting, and the more cuts, the more it bleeds and stings.
I'm terrified of motherhood someday, and I'm in no rush to be one now...but I do want it someday. I do want to know what its like to have someone look into my eyes and call me "mommy." And I do want to have the life back where I wake up next to a husband everyday, but this time one who says "I love you" and when he says it, he means it. I want forever to mean forever, not "forever or until something better comes along." And I want to plan goals and dreams and work for them to make them come true.