The soldier and I are becoming very emotional as our wedding date draws near. We had about 12 hours together this weekend which passed quickly. We briefly thought we were going to be able to spend the day together but the wind changed and that didn’t come to pass.

The soldier was jolted by this, he was not really ready to leave. The going / not going / then going through him for a loop but the jerk of it didn’t hit me for awhile. It’s very possible we won’t see each other until the day (or more likely the middle of the night) before our wedding. This is pretty hard to consider because like I said we are both getting increasingly emotional.

I am not sure the root or the scope or the way of his emotion but I do understand my own. I have been in a very queer situation since we got in contact in 2003, I have been trying to catch up. We split up when Saturn was where it will be when we marry this time. We were both extremely traumatized but had very different experiences from that point on.

I walked around in a shocked stupor for about 6 months after he was gone. I was still a teenager and had suffered almost non-stop trauma since I was born. Make of that what you will, I don’t really have a comment except to say that within a year I had come to terms with the loss, or at least accepted it.  Within 3 or 4 years I was sure he was dead as he told me would be and the idea he might not be never crossed my mind for close to 20 years.

I thought about him but never talked about him. I was too embarrassed for one thing. He had married and I was convinced I was never good enough for him in the first place, also that he loved this other woman way, way, way more than he ever loved me.

I did not grok the fact when a man marries 10 days after they break up with you it’s called “on the rebound” and like I said I never spoke of this with anyone so there was no one there to explain or tell me any different so it was written this way and written in stone.

He lived in my memory, as a dashing man - too dashing for me but one I was always glad and grateful to have known. He was so kind to me… he gave me my first car (which was a motorcycle) and thoughts like this were followed immediately by this one, “too bad he’s dead” because I had no doubt this was the case.

In contrast he spent his life with my memory not just on the periphery but pervading his life. He collected all those songs for example. More than 20 years of that and various other sundries so when we got back in contact, well he had processed our relationship throughout his life while I had done nothing.

Putting then together with now… catching up was in no way a pleasant process.  Matter of fact it was one of the harder things I have ever done in my life. It was so hard I had to take 3 years off in the middle of the 6 years it has taken us to get together.

Everyone thinks I can’t go black like that and they are so wrong.  Ask my sister. I didn’t talk to her for about 8 years. I do have a limit and when you hit it you surely know it but in whatever case, I’ll tell you what feels crappy, it is to be so far behind.

I have memory problems as it is but besides that the soldier is extremely sophisticated emotionally and otherwise.  Due this and the fact he had been thinking about “us” all his life he was on to concepts and able to communicate them long before I had any idea what he was talking about.

As a consequence our conversations were odd and very humbling to me as well as embarrassing. I simply could not respond to a lot of what he was saying because I do have integrity and if I don’t know what you are talking about I am not going to pretend that I do.  I will listen though. I will stretch and I will try to understand and so for many, many months our conversations sounded like this:

Him: “Blah, blah, blah, blah. What do you think, P?” He would be asking about something he had thought about in depth for 2 decades.  “Do you think this means what I think it means?”

“Um… I don’t know,” I’d say, over and over. “I have not thought of that. Um… I would like to answer you, that deserves an answer but I have no thought about it that originates in me so I… well I just don’t know, I am sorry.”

Do you know how many times I said that or something like that? Probably 50 times. Can you imagine talking to someone about your deepest thought and feeling and having them come back with a blank slate? I’d get off the phone in a state of angst but hey. I said he deserved an answer and I can’t give an answer until I have an answer and at the time…

Well it was very much like getting to town from the desert.  Fact is, when I got to town as a kid I didn’t know what was going on.  I had to learn and this time I was not going to rush or fake it because I did have enough sense to intuit the magnitude of what I was dealing with.

So now we’re getting married in a few days and all the smoke between us is gone.  We are tight knit and never going to let go but I am still barely comprehending the situation.

If he put the shoe on the wrong foot 30 years ago, what happens when he puts it on the right foot now? What does it mean?  We are going to marry and find that out, I hope.