Lone Cyprus

Lone Cyprus

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Love & Marriage: I blame...

I was engaged to be married once. Almost ten years ago, my mid 20s. I dated this guy for a little over a year and he proposed. I said yes. We planned a wedding but before we got to the wedding, he decided someone else looked better. Three months before the mostly paid for wedding I get the news over the phone. Until that point in my life, I didn't know what it meant to be sad. I was devastated. Time and the hope of meeting someone new did its work on me. I kept it movin'.

So, today I was looking through some old pictures and I see the one and only photo I have of myself in the wedding dress I bought a decade ago. It's a photo of me in my purchased gown at my first fitting. Besides looking at that picture once or twice back then, I haven't seen that dress since. I paid for it and left it at the store. Ignored the boutique's calls for me to pick it up. And when I looked at that picture, I felt sadness and regret. A sincere longing for another chance.

Pause! Let me make clear what I'm sad and regretful of, what I want another chance at doing. It has nothing to do with the guy. He can have his "better" choice and whatever else. I don't have anything to say about him. I'm over him. What I'm not over, is the marriage. I'm not over having someone to share my life with. Life is a series of ups and downs, like a rollercoaster. It's fun and exciting and boring and sad. I unapologetically want someone to go through all of that with. So looking at that picture of me in a wedding gown makes me sad I never got to dress up in that beautiful dress and make a promise in front of my family to share my life and grow a family with a man I loved. I regret that I spent too much time more hung up on whether or not I was good enough than just going for it. I would give anything to have another chance to meet a great man, fall in love, have our wedding and then get to work living, together. I never invisioned this being a perfect life. I just invisioned it being a full life.

The truth is, now it's impossible. When I was diagnosed with Scleroderma that included all my lung involvement, I was told 5 years was the average survival rate. This fall is 5 years. I'm still holding on, although it be by a thread at times. So ya know it's safe to say finding a life partner at this point is not happening. No children of my own either. For some, that would be no big thing but for me, it's a rather painful subject. Being a mother is something I have always hoped for.

These are just a couple of the things Scleroderma has taken from me. The emotional pain that lingers from the death of this dream is particuarly foul. Looking at the picture of that wedding gown and feeling a fair amount of disdain isn't the dress's fault and it's not my ex's fault (totally), and it surely isn't my fault. It's Scleroderna's fault. And Scleroderma is a bitch.