Friday, May 2, 2008

Prompt 11.2: History/Couple's Therapy

I love my wife, I want nothing more than to be married to her, and for the two of us to raise our son together, but, what I want, and what is happening in our lives sometimes seems like two different things.

We all come into a relationship with our own history. We carry things which happened in our past, good and bad, things that shaped who we are now, things we can't go back and change, regardless of how badly we might want to.  In my case, it was my marriage to Danijela that has hung like a dark cloud over Abby and I since we first met. I loved Danijela with all my heart, I still love her, I always will, and no amount of time will ever change that. She was my first love, we lost our virginity to each other.  We struggled to build a home out of nothing, we shared the birth's of two children, and we would have endured their loss together had fate not stolen her life on the day it took our children.

When Abby and I first went out, I had just failed in my first attempt at entering into a relationship since losing my family.  I don't know that anything would ever have come of Carol and I being together, but, at the time she was alone with two children and being with her offered me a chance to regain the one thing I missed the most in my life, and that was a family. When Carol decided to leave Chicago, and try again with the father of her children, my first instinct was to retreat back into my memories of how my life had been. I think I might have, if not for Abby, if not for that stolen kiss, outside of County.

From our very first date though, it seemed that fate was looking for a way to warn us away from each other, and if it wasn't just the love I still held for my wife and children, it was still more death. I know that neither of us could have expected the mugger that first night, nor the severity of my reaction to him, but, it doesn't change what I did to him, or what it did to us.

As much as we both blamed my past, there was no denying that what had happened in Abby's played a factor as well, and in the end, combining them all proved to be toxic. The way we parted was ugly, we both hurled words at the other meant to wound, to cause pain. We both used weaknesses from the other's past as weapons. We both said things for which we will be forever ashamed, but, unable to recallthem, they now are part of our history.

Abby and I eventually found our way back to each other, and despite our past history we decided to try again.  It hasn't been easy, and we are struggling, but, neither one of us is ready to walk away again, not this time, not this time.


 

 

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