In Love

I am ridiculously, shamelessly, unabashedly, and, for the most part, blatantly... in love.

Yes, ladies and gentlemen. It has finally happened. You heard it here, folks. After more than a decade of ins, outs, baggage, mistakes, stupidity, real tragedy, obnoxious tragedy, beautiful things and beautiful stings, I have finally found that kind of puppy dog love that I have only ever scoffed about and watched fade from my eyes before it began at multiple junctions and stops in my life.

Now, that being said, I don't mean to sound bitter. I am not. Really I am not. I have always believed that that kind of love exists--even before I knew it could exist for me; and when I found that it could exist for me, it was kind of taken and smashed around a bit until there was nothing left. In plain terms, I only had a jaded, vague idea of what true love was, what it would mean for me, and accepted it would never fall in my lap exactly the way it did because of the examples I had as a kid (marred and unhealthy), and ultimately lacked vision and resource for how to save that love as recurring cancer and medical hoopla created more stress than young love and immature mexiwegians could handle.

Or stupid. I don't mean to sound stupid, either. Nothing is more awkward than watching gangly teenagers in love and sucking face in public. Except for having someone over thirty proclaiming to be in love all over a blog and having to read it.

But I came to understand a different kind of jadedness that comes from perceiving love was undeserved and viewing it in a negative or incorrect light, to the end that it was tossed away and the opportunity was lost. It wasn't. Or maybe it was. But it doesn't really matter anymore, to the end that everyone involved in this story has moved forward and marched on. (Even though parts do matter very much. Some things just cannot be so indifferently regarded...)

And with the evolution of conquering doubts and fears, so come the possibilities. Possibilities of love. Possibilities of finding someone on a dating match website. Possibilities of finding that someone. Possibilities of doing the one thing you want to do: taking all of your life experiences and matching those to someone who understands them and wants the same things you do. Namely, to fight for love and for each other and safeguard each other from the state of the world today, in a world where good and evil is dividing more extremely every day. Possibilities of finding that kind of best friend. That kind of best friend...

And for well over a year, that is who and what I've found in Trevor.

I have wanted this for SO LONG. I have wanted this wayyyyyy more than I ever admitted. What I have with this man right now is what I have always never dared to wish I would eventually have. This is what my daughters are already starting to get giddy about, remind me of myself, this is what I thought I had but never did. This is what I was always afraid to have. This is what's possible.

It is not negating the days and letters spent trying to justify getting married the way I did, because I still stand by my choices, even though things changed; it is not even negating the bullshit stint I pulled going cross-country trying to get out of that marriage and attach like a dummy magnet to an emotionally manipulating butt nugget, a butt nugget whose lies I wanted to be true.

But it IS a new beginning. It is definitely something that I don't feel I have to go solo on. I have found someone who seems to be my match. I feel we are complimentary to each other as much as we are symmetrically matched. Our stories and our values and our goals are so similar. He makes me laugh. We are at home with each other. There is mutual respect. There is love. Sacrificial love.