I was Poked!

I was pleasantly surprised this week! My best friend from college "poked" me on facebook!! We had lost touch many years ago and I had often  wondered what had happened with her life. When we lost touch she was married with two small children in North Carolina and her life/world looked as close to perfect as my brain could wrap around. She had the very well dressed perfect kids, the big beautiful house that looked like it could have come out of a magazine. Her husband had a good job, she was doing wedding planning and scrapbooking. I believe..very creative "perfect" things. I am sure her life wasn't all this perfection, but since so many of the things that I longed for were lacking , her life sure looked good!

When we lost touch I was sure it was because of me. I wasn't married, if I was it didn't count. She came to visit once (maybe twice, but I could have blocked out the second time) I was living with my first husband in a small house with two Dalmatians and a dozen puppies. The bed she had to sleep on had no frame or headboard. My then husband was loud,obnoxious and drunk most of the time...I spent her visit being embarrassed by my life. Instead of the nice visit I wanted, I was hiding all of the fighting and hoped she wasnt noticing all of the drinking.

We lost touch and I went on to marry a second time. I had remained friends over the years with a boy that I dated in high school. He was the cute surfer that my parents were not crazy about at the time but they grew to like him after we got married.

That marriage lasted about two years. What went wrong? He drank, I bitched and we both needed time to grow up a little. We still talk on occasion and I would do anything for him, one of those things where we should have stayed best friends and not ruined it with marriage.

Ok then on to number 3....What? you thought that I would have given up dating and enjoyed life? Noo..just kidding. Number 3...We met in beautiful St Simon's Island GA after talking a very short time on AOL.Yes after husband two I discovered the Internet! There was a lot of dating going on.Number 3 and I really clicked.At the time we met I had a girlfriend and he was fine with that. I wasn't as fine with his girlfriends but it worked. It never really occurred to me that I could have a serious romantic one on one relationship with a female. I knew other gay couples but just never considered that option for myself.

After a year of dating long distance he moved to Florida. We moved in together and got married. We had a very good life together. All of the things I thought would make a perfect life...Nice cars,Big houses, yacht club memberships, wonderful vacations...and so on. Boy was I wrong on that one!

 We started doing foster care because I wanted children. I fell in love with my first foster baby...Jabez.  

All thoughts of adopting this perfect little boy ended one day in court when the judge thought it would be better if he was raised by his grandparents. I would go on to take in dozens of other foster children but none filled the hole in my heart left by this boy.

Fast forward a few years and I was sitting home more often than not waiting for the phone to ring in the middle of the night. Not for news of children needing a home for the night but for Number 3 needing a ride home from the club so he wouldn't be drinking and driving. He would go out more and more and I would turn to my "computer" friends for company and understanding.

I could go on and on about the things that happened but we can't go back and it wouldn't change anything..so moving forward in my story...

Between that day in Oct of 2006 when I walked out of my life as I knew it  and today...

I am able to smile, I am with a woman that makes me very happy. I am in a relationship that knows TRUST, not just trusting that there will not be cheating but trust that we will do nothing to harm the relationship we have together.

Today I laugh more than I cry

I smile more than I frown

and I look forward to every day ahead of me