My Life’s Journey

* This story is in no way implying that there is never a reason for divorce or that if your marriage ended in divorce, I think less of you. This is not me judging anyone — it’s simply a reflection on my own life.

When I had just turned 16 years old, I met a guy who had an energy I had never experienced before.

He was redheaded and flamboyant and had a zest for life that I had never felt burning inside me.

He was so excited by life that he bounced half the time when he was going from Point A to Point B.

He always wanted an adventure, and he didn’t seem to know how to sit still.

Actually, the reason I met him was because he had a crush on my best friend, and she didn’t like him that way, but she didn’t want to hurt his feelings, so she asked me to take care of it.

Not that I was an unkind person, but I was very good at being a shield for the people I cared about.

I spent my whole life feeling a responsibility for everyone who mattered to me. It wasn’t till I was much older that I recognized how unhealthy this was and took steps to try to heal from the things that made me feel like I needed to carry the weight of everyone’s baggage on my back.

So, I called him.

I told him she wasn’t interested and that he needed to back off. I didn’t want to hurt him either, but he wasn’t one of my people, and my fierce loyalty to my people often drove me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise even consider.

He took it well, I have to say, but he didn’t stop showing up.

He lived about two hours away from where my best friend and I lived, but he and his big brother, and at times his best friend, kept popping up.

And the more I watched him, the more fascinated I was.

His fire wasn’t dimmed in the least by the brutal honesty I had doled out.

If someone had said that to me: “He isn’t interested. Just back off, okay?” I would have crawled in a hole and hoped I would die.

I would have possibly tried to smother myself with my own pillow.

Drowned myself in the lake close to the house.

Willed myself to sleep forever so I wouldn’t have to face the next day.

Dug a hole in the backyard and buried myself alive in the desperate attempt to never again face the dawn.

What I would never in a million years have done, was come back for more. Shown up again. Put myself out there in the world to be kicked and rejected.

You just . . . couldn’t do that.

You couldn’t allow yourself to be vulnerable.

I didn’t trust anyone, not even my closest friends, honestly.

I needed to protect myself, after all.

No one could be trusted, and that was a fact.

If you only count on yourself, you don’t give people the power to hurt you.

Because that’s what people do. They hurt.

They betray.

They lie and cheat and let you down.

But here he was.

Back again and as happy as he ever was, his smile as wide as it would stretch and bouncing from one end of the room to the other.

I didn’t get it.

I couldn’t even come close to understanding it.

But I couldn’t get enough of it, either.

Was it possible that the world was bigger than I had always thought?

He talked like a person could make anything happen — they just had to want it badly enough.

The way he believed in life’s possibilities made something inside of me stir, something I had beaten down and drowned out for so long that I wasn’t even sure it still existed.

He was everything I wasn’t.

He was nothing like anyone I had ever met.

And I needed more.

He was like a breath of life.

Fresh air in a room I hadn’t even known was polluted.

I wanted to breathe him in as often as I could, and soon, we were spending every weekend together.

It was breathtakingly exhilarating and nothing like me.

I was not spontaneous.

I was studious.

Responsible.

A “good” girl.

I did what was expected of me at all times.

And he did what he wanted.

He blazed into my life and swept me along without even meaning to.

I was sure our future together would be nothing but good and bright and happy.

How could it be anything else?

He was the sunshine, and I was the rain.

I knew he could chase all the clouds away.

But the sun can’t shine every day, can it?

And real life is not as simple as sixteen.

My redheaded fella is still my future.

But there have been a lot of storm clouds in between that 16-year-old couple and the middle-aged chapter we live in now.

“Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”
— Maya Angelou

But, almost 24 years later, he still takes my breath away.

And I still can’t believe the life we’ve built and the future we’re living and will still get to live.

He is my steady now in a way I once thought he could never be.

And I am the goofy he dearly needs in the seriousness he shrouds himself in.

How the tables turn in life.

Staying with one person for as long as we have been together requires a lot of patience and love and understanding and willingness to get to know each other every time we change.

Life is fluid, and people don’t stay exactly the same.

But love bears all things.

Love builds up.

Love is patient.

And love should never die.

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread — remade all the time, made new.”
— Ursula K. Le Guin

My fella turned 40 at the beginning of the month, and he doesn’t have much of that 16-year-old jack-in-the-box left in him.

He is serious and often crabby, and that thrilling level of optimism he used to have has been beaten out of him by life.

But this moody, “good” girl is still just as fascinated by the man he is today.

He is my life’s journey.

Forever is a thing, if both people are willing to put the work in. ❤

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.” ― Mignon McLaughlin

Peace and love, y’all. ❤

© Melissa Gray 2023

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This post was previously published on MEDIUM.COM.

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The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer

What We Talk About When We Talk About Men

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