My fiance and I met while we were both teaching in a small, rural school in Wisconsin.  I was newly separated when we met and he was my best friend through the worst time of my life.  After my divorce, we began dating and basically having the best time of our lives together.  After two years together, we have built a wonderful life and a little family of pets.  I left my teaching position last year in order to go to graduate school but it hasn't been what I thought it would be.  Because of a number of problems related to money and credits and incompetent program directors, this year has been so frustrating and difficult.  In addition to my own problems, my fiance and I have had to learn to live together on a very limited budget which has taught us to work through issues that we were not prepared to face.  As the final push to insanity, my boyfriend decided to resign his position as well to return to graduate school himself.  So, long story short, after all of this hardship that our baby relationship has been through, he asked me to marry him on the second anniversary of our first date at the same baseball park where we went on that first date.  I am overwhelmed and awed at the sweetness and devotion of this wonderful man who loves me so much, no only in spite of my flaws but also because of them.

It's been a long time since I've blogged on here, though it hasn't been unthought of.  I've just been adjusting and dealing with the craziness that is everyday life and haven't been forcing myself to write as much as I should.

So I'm reviving a dead blog and renewing my spirit in the process.  Just because I want to get in the habit of writing, even though I've been out of practice for a while, I'll throw in a quick life update and we'll go from there.

I'm currently living in not-very-wonderful-at-all Wautoma, WI and am doing several things to occupy my time.  Since I am not teaching full time this year, I am substitute teaching in several districts within driving distance of my apartment.  It's interesting work and brings me ninety bucks a day, when I get to work that is.  In addition to that thrilling exploit, I'm working 15-20 hours a week at my local grocery store, the Piggly Wiggly. 

Last semester I was taking 6 credits at a local state university to get my master's in English, but due to financial difficulties, I am taking this semester off.  I miss school already, though it was definately difficult last semester.  I love the work so much that even the extreme nature of it, and the heart wretching anxiety that comes with it, is unable to make me feel like quitting.  I'm planning on starting up again in the summer and am looking forward to getting back to work.

My house is completely filled with animals.  We are now housing two parrots (Ruby, an eclectus and Plato, a meyer's), a corn snake (Clyde), a leopard gecko (Kiwi), an increadibly fat guinea pig (Carlos), two cats (Sweetness and Stella), and a 55 gallon fish tank.  In addition, Pickle bird is a long term house guest as well.

The boyfriend and I are preparing for a changed situation soon, since we are planning on moving, yet again.  The boyfriend will not be teaching at the same school next year so we are planning to move to Oshkosh.  This will facilitate us both going to school full time.  Boyfriend is considering a Master's in Biology and a possible career change.  We are both planning to apply for teaching jobs in the fall, despite our desire to go to school. At the moment there are jobs starting to pop up be we are looking at going to Oshkosh and work or go to school somewhere around there.

It is tough but I am trying to have faith that all will work out.  Lets see....

I can't believe how horrible of a person I am. Within a matter of days I greatly hurt both the man that I loved for most of my adolescence and the man that I want to love for the rest of my life. What kind of person does that? What kind of person returns love and adoration with pain and abandonment?

I am not cleaning my apartment. I desperately want to. Wait, check that. I desperately want a clean apartment but I don't want to clean it. It's not even that. I just get so... lazy. I have several boxes laying around from my recent moving adventures. I need to unpack them, put away the contents that are staying in this apartment, and repack all of the things that go to storage. Ugh. Why can't it just be done? The upside is that next year, when he and I are getting ready to move to parts unspecified, I will already have most of my stuff packed. No, I won't. I think that but it's not true. Moving next summer will be just as much of a pain as moving ever is. We did decide, however, that we would hire movers. Pack everything ourselves and then pay someone to carry it out of the apartments and into the new place. Okay. I'm going to post this and then I'm going to go get some lunch. I am getting McDonald's. I could make something but... again with the laziness. Double ugh.

Sex. It's always the elephant in the room, isn't it? When is it ever not an issue?

We are very similar people. A matched set. I think that if we could have created someone to love, we would not have been very far off from what we have. We enjoy similar music, laugh at the same dumb jokes, want the same things from our lives. We are from similar small, Wisconsin towns and even love similar flavors of ice cream.

We both feel lost at times and have struggled against similar melancholies for many years. We are at a loss to explain why this is, but have accepted that it simply is. I have felt out of place in nearly every place my entire life. He has too.

We have had very different lives, though. I graduate from college only a year after he finished high school. I started living my life independently (at least from my parents) a full three years before he did. I've struggled since finishing college to find something that made me feel worthwhile and challenge me; he found his job in Adams in his first round of applications, though it hasn't been what either of us was looking for.

The biggest difference is our respective romantic pasts. I'm coming out of a five year marriage at the end of a thirteen year relationship. In the course of the time, I had relationships with two other guys as well. Well, one sadomasochistic relationship and one hookup after several weeks of hardcore flirting.

He's never been in love before now. He's never felt that someone else could identify with what he was feeling inside and therefore never felt comfortable to open up to someone else. That reticence has prevented him from having a relationship before now. And because of he's never been in love, he's never made love with anyone.

I've reassured him a number of times that this is something that I admire about him. I admire the fact that he didn't indulge in the easy, meaningless sex that is so readily available in college. The fact that he never met a girl at a bar, waited until he or she or both were so drunk that they couldn't see why not, and took her home is just a part of what makes him so incredible and so incredibly different from the men that I've been with before.

Every relationship I've ever had before has been about sex first and love second, if ever. Andy and I started our relationship by making out on Amy's couch while we were each "dating" someone else. This was in the middle of June, the summer before we started high school. We continued our illicit "affair" for several weeks until we had both ended it with our respective others. We then began to date offically at the end of July. We had sex for the first time at the end of October of that same year. I was fourteen years old; Andy was fifteen, since it was his birthday.

When I broke up with Andy the following February, we continued to have sex regularly until school let out in June. We then started sleeping together again in September, though we didn't actually start dating again until November. When I would again try to seperate myself from my relationship with Andy in the spring of my Freshman year at college, a similar pattern took place. Though we both dated a few other people, we were still having sex with each other.

I have always counted myself incredibly and unbelievably lucky that Andy loved me. By the time we entered our Senior year of high school, Andy and I cared greatly and deeply for each other. I was spared many of the horrible emotion scares that are inflicted on young girls who lose their virginities too soon. Andy did not use me for sex and then leave me, alone and unsure of who or what I was. He was sweet and kind and, I think, just as scared about sex as I was.

Things were slightly different with Keith, though sex was definately the focus of the relationship. I had been infatuated with Keith for months as we tried to be "friends" with each other. He knew of my feelings for him and I convinced myself that he shared those feelings, or at least that he sympathized with me for feeling the way that I did. This was an incorrect assumption. He gloried in my affection for him without ever feeling any connection to me whatsoever. He enjoyed having me idolize him without having to return those feelings to me, in fact he didn't even have to be very nice to me; I worshipped him inspite of his cruel treatment of me.

When he began to realize that I was willing to sleep with him even though he continued to degrade me, he saw the possibilities of what our relationship could entail. As a group we had all discussed the idea of friends who sleep together. I had proposed this idea to Keith several times. I thought we had such a good friendship and that we could add sex to that relationship without any emotional attachments. I allowed myself to forget the fact that I was infatuated with him and that sleeping with him would only push my tender heart closer to the breaking point.

During finals week, Keith finally gave in to me and we had sex twice. It was a culmination for me; I felt as though I had finally achieved what I had wanted for so long: to know that he wanted me too. I think that my mind saw sex as what would bind him to me and make him feel for me the way that I had felt for him for so long. I was wrong. Keith timed his submission to me perfectly. He was able to enjoy what I was willing to give him, tell me that there would be nothing more between us and leave to go home for the summer.

Though I had escaped that degredation with my first sexual relationship, I was given it in spades with my second.

Ryan was a different animal completely. Ryan and I had been friends for a year and a half when we slept together. And not even very good friends, to be honest. Ryan was one of a group of boys that I spent time with during my sophomore and junior years at college. These were guys that I had met in the dorms, through a mutual friend, that I really just enjoyed being with. They were raunchy and funny. We played video games, made fun of tv shows, made dirty jokes and laughed almost constantly. It was kind of like being in the locker room sometimes but I enjoyed it. They were uncomplicated and my friendship with them was uncomplicated as well. Ryan was in no way special from these other boys, aside from the fact that he was very good looking and charming.

In the fall of my junior year, I was engaged to Andy and had finally rebuilt a friendship that had been very important to me for several years. I was generally happy with my life at that point. After a falling out with that same friend, however, I lost control of myself and my emotions. Losing her, though I can see now how little good she did in my life, caused me more pain than I would have thought possible.

I started to spend time with other friends more than I had before, and this included the Boys. This time with them led into some very heavy flirting between myself and Ryan, both in person and via internet chat. Again, timing could not have been more in his favor. Two weeks before the end of the semester, a girlfriend and I got very drunk and spent several hours making out with Ryan on the futon in his dorm room. A week after that, I was drunk again and had sex with Ryan, alone, on that same futon.

He withdrew from the University at the end of that semester, as he knew that he would. And, other than a few cases of being in the same room with other friends and one chat session, I have never talked to him again. The good thing about Ryan, and the uncomplicated friendship that I had had with him, was that sleeping together did not really affect that relationship. Had we not had sex, he would still have left school and we probably, still, would not have continued our friendship.

I never told Andy about either of my other sexual relationships. I feared how he would respond and was worried about how much it would hurt him to know that I had not only slept with other people while we were together, but that I had lied to him about it for years.

I'm not proud of all of the things that I've done. I made choices that hurt myself as well as others. But I'm also not apologizing for my past. The experiences that I've had, both good and bad, have made me into the person that I am today. I am stronger and wiser because of the mistakes that I have made, and that includes sex.

He loves me and I finally have a chance to build a relationship and do things right. God, please don't let me screw this up.

Today was the last day of work. It is officially summer.

As of tomorrow, my life will be officially on a different course. Here we go.... In the last 3 months I have 1.) Realized that I don't want to have a baby at any point in the near future. I love children and I love my neice and nephew more than most things on this planet. But I cannot grasp the idea of having a child right now. I still feel so much like a child myself. When I was trying to get pregnant, I wanted a baby. I think that there is a part of me that was stirring and thinking about awakening. But everytime I thought about that little life and its dependence on me... I felt like my life was over before it had even begun. I couldn't think about how much I wanted to teach her or all the things I would want to show him; all I thought about was all that I would not be able to do. I am too selfish to have child right now. I want to go to Europe. I want to go to graduate school. Some day, little rockets (maybe a rockette or two) will be wonderful, with their blond hair and sweet blue eyes. 2.) Seperated from the man who had been my best friend and my partner for 13 years. After nearly a lifetime of making Andy the most important thing in my life, I'm finally taking charge of what makes me happy. I can't bring myself to regret the years that I spent with Andy. I went into it willingly and with both eyes open. If anything, I regret that I did not make it clear to him what I wanted. Maybe if I had done so from the beginning ... at the very least, we may have prevented some of the pain that we caused each other. 3.) Moved so many of my possessions that I'm ready to throw it all away. I can't believe that I've got so much stuff. I remember when I could pack all of my belongings in four plastic tubs and the day that I left Platteville with everthing I owned in my Honda Prelude. 4.) Remembered how much I love animals. No more limits on pets, rather than my own limits of course. Today, the fish tank moved in. Soon there will also be fish. Beau and Sweetness seem to have settled into the apartment and are enjoying themselves. Other than Sweetness' overwhelming distaste for Katie, things are going well here. 5.) Fallen in love again. During the months that I was thinking about what I wanted to do, about ending my marriage and beginning my life again, one of the hardest things to deal with was the fear that no one would ever love me again. The fear that I could not love another person. I can't believe how I feel about him. When I imagined the man who would make me happy, who would be the man for me, I imagined a man like him. Smart, funny, sweet. He makes me laugh and he makes me smile. He is all that I ever wanted in a love. And he encourages me to be who I want to be. I always believed in fate. I always believed that what happened, happened for a reason. I believed that when I came to Adams, it was to do something or to learn something. I wondered for months what that was. I think I know now. He tells me that I am an angel, that God sent me to him to save him. I see it a little differently. I think that we were both lost, that we both needed to find our way in the wilderness. I think that we both ended up here together to help each other. To save each other. My life is headed in another direction from where I thought it was. But I am happier than I've ever been and I can't wait to begin the rest of my life.

All I want is to be with him. I want the "hurdles" or "strings" or "back story" to be over and for me to be free to be with him. He told me last night that he is not going to change his mind, that he has never thought that it is too hard and he doesn't want to be with me. I believe him, I do. I know that he loves me... But it is hard to give up the fear. The fear that my baggage is too much and it is not worth it. For the first time in nearly 13 years, I don't want to run away. I am happy with my life the way that it is. If it wasn't for this cloud hanging overhead... There is a part of me that is ready for it to all be over and is ready to give up anything for that to happen. Then there is the part of me that is angry. That part will not let the rest of me be happy. Maybe that is just another way that he is manipulating me. By allowing myself to continue to be angry with him about things that are over and done with, I'm allowing him to infringe on my happiness. That continues to give him control over me. If I truly want to let him go, and the years of doing as he wanted and feeling bad for not wanting that too, don't I have to just let it go?