By the by... E is not going to Ireland. When my head stops spinning I'll divulge it all... but til then I'll be waiting for the room to stop moving.
Have you ever noticed that sometimes something someone says takes a while to sink in? They say it to you one day, and then three days later it hits you that it had a real effect on you...
The sun was shining, but the way the diner sits on the corner it was, blessedly, not streaming in the windows. Its our favorite diner. Our favorite place to sit on hungover mornings. Its ours. And this is where we were on Sunday morning. In my memory I can hear all the bustling, and the dull scribble of other people's conversations. In real life I know that it didn't get quiet when he said this, but in my memory it did, in my memory its like someone pressed "mute" for the background noise. We were talking about marriage, about what it meant to us. He says "For me marriage and children are like exits on my highway, like accessories to my life, I don't necessarily want or need them, but they will probably happen to me..." And in my memory it means something, something it didn't mean when he said it to me.
I realized that even if he ever did come to his senses and realize that he loves me, that I will never, ever trust that he's telling the truth. I used to imagine (as most girls do) what it would be like if he asked me to marry him, the fantasy has taken place in different venues, at different times of day, with all sorts of different rings. My reaction was always the same, tears, then "yes." No more. My fantasy now starts the same, but the ending is different, uglier. It ends with me saying something like "Welcome to your exit, am I a state road? Or maybe just a small town road, someplace that you leave quickly... " The romance of all of it has disappeared. Another facet of this whole thing is, if a wife and children are only accessories to his life, maybe they're hats, gloves, stylish boots... Then what am I? Perhaps a set of novelty cufflinks, I feel that I stretch even saying novelty, I feel that maybe I'm a shoe horn, something to use... Then leave in a drawer til I'm needed again. Because if something as important as a life partner, the bearer of children, is only an accessory then how could I be more than that?
Have you ever noticed that sometimes something someone says takes a while to sink in? They say it to you one day, and then three days later it hits you that it had a real effect on you...
The sun was shining, but the way the diner sits on the corner it was, blessedly, not streaming in the windows. Its our favorite diner. Our favorite place to sit on hungover mornings. Its ours. And this is where we were on Sunday morning. In my memory I can hear all the bustling, and the dull scribble of other people's conversations. In real life I know that it didn't get quiet when he said this, but in my memory it did, in my memory its like someone pressed "mute" for the background noise. We were talking about marriage, about what it meant to us. He says "For me marriage and children are like exits on my highway, like accessories to my life, I don't necessarily want or need them, but they will probably happen to me..." And in my memory it means something, something it didn't mean when he said it to me.
I realized that even if he ever did come to his senses and realize that he loves me, that I will never, ever trust that he's telling the truth. I used to imagine (as most girls do) what it would be like if he asked me to marry him, the fantasy has taken place in different venues, at different times of day, with all sorts of different rings. My reaction was always the same, tears, then "yes." No more. My fantasy now starts the same, but the ending is different, uglier. It ends with me saying something like "Welcome to your exit, am I a state road? Or maybe just a small town road, someplace that you leave quickly... " The romance of all of it has disappeared. Another facet of this whole thing is, if a wife and children are only accessories to his life, maybe they're hats, gloves, stylish boots... Then what am I? Perhaps a set of novelty cufflinks, I feel that I stretch even saying novelty, I feel that maybe I'm a shoe horn, something to use... Then leave in a drawer til I'm needed again. Because if something as important as a life partner, the bearer of children, is only an accessory then how could I be more than that?
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