I have been having trouble lately getting my thoughts straight. I am all over the place in the recesses of my mind, thinking, wondering, pondering, deciphering, scrutinizing, etc...I think my brain wants to make sense of all the twists and turns my life has taken. If I think back, I never saw this coming. Where I am at in my life. I don't per say think that my decisions and choices have put me in a bad position, nor do I regret any of them, life is just so different at the moment. I have found myself reflecting more now than usual.
Almost four years ago I was living in a huge metropolis, fresh from my master's degree breathing in the life of a big city. As cliche as it sounds I felt alive and dead at the same time. Mass amounts of people and sensory stimulation make you feel like something exciting is always happening, sometimes too much. The weight of the city crushed me and gave me hope. There was extreme struggle there though, and I think this is something that I don't like to remember. We all want to dwell on the bright side, the good things that happened in our life, the "glory days," and tend to shut out the pain of the past. Circumstances occurred that brought me back to small town living, and as I have said before that changed everything.
I met Isaac almost two years after I moved back. If you have read my blog, then you know my story, so I will not go into all of that again, but what I found waiting for me here was beyond my comprehension. So I bring myself back to living in my head these past couple months. Everything is coming full circle. Isaac and I are getting married! I am very excited about this, but my mind also goes to crazy places. I have the usual doubts, regarding whether or not I am making a wise choice entering into marriage. I love him with all my heart, no doubts there. He saved my heart when it was close to dying. He metaphorically resuscitated me, breathed life back into my deflated soul.
I was at such a low point in my life when we reconnected, that there was not much light at the end of the tunnel, and so then I wonder, was that why I fell so hard? Is that the reason I cling to him with such desperation? Am I afraid that if I lose him, that I will lose myself? I understand this is such black or white thinking. This fear that I may not be a whole person if I lose the one I love, and oh do I love him so deeply. Is this the crux of prison relationships? This wanting but not having? This tug and pull, this "distance makes the heart grow fonder" concept? Do I love more fully because what I want, what I love, is not within arms reach? I believe in loving hard to no end, but I also believe in protecting myself, or perhaps my mind and body believe in protecting itself. I do not want my heart squished, and I know Isaac has no intentions of doing this. The mistakes between us are of the past, and I have finally accepted this.
You know I never thought love could be so grey. In my mind it was like "if he crossed you once, or made a mistake you are gone." The relationship is over. We are human beings though for goodness sakes!!! We mess up, we don't know what we want sometimes, we make poor choices. Many think my decision to marry Isaac while he is incarcerated is a poor choice. Many think that since we have never lived together, that we do not know each other well enough. Yes we have not shared a living space, learned every subtle annoyance, or ate each other's bad cooking on a regular basis, but we KNOW each other. We know one another better than most know there long term partners because we have had this time apart, the 10 page letters, the phone calls squeezed into 15 minute intervals to really hash out who we are and want we desire from each other. Every little thing suddenly takes on a great deal of importance.We look forward to those little things! We look forward to normalcy! I want nothing greater to never hear or see or think about anything regarding prison ever again. I will be one happy lady when that day comes. Yes we will never be truly rid of the "ghost" of prison past, but life will be about NOW, not the circumstances of his incarceration, or the taboo nature of loving an inmate.
I have gotten slightly off track. I started discussing how much my life has changed. Is it for the better? Is it just different? Is my happiness contingent upon another person? This I do not fully know or understand yet. But as I always come back to the fact of what I know about life. I know that human relationships seem to make this world go round. I know that I love Isaac and that he loves me. Why is it so wrong to just go with the moment? Not to flee responsibility, not to disown the world, but to live without constantly wondering if you made the right decision, or why you are not in the place in your life that you thought you would be in by now? I thought I would be married with three children by my age. I thought I would be working in the field that I studied to make a career in. I thought I would still live in a large city, still be haunted by my past, still loathe life. But me, as I am, am happy and for this moment that is all I can cling to and all that matters.
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