One of those long entries where I can't sleep so I talk about love and stuff.
It's after 2AM, I can't sleep (again) so I'm sitting here thinking of when we met. He was nineteen and I was sixteen and I still remember just the way he looked when he looked over his shoulder from the front seat and said "Jed." I don't remember now if he shook my hand or not. Mike was driving and it was off to the pool hall with my girlfriend Valerie by my side in the back of Mike's red Renault.
That one moment where he looked at me from over the seat is still completely frozen in my mind. While it wasn't LITERALLY the first time we met (we met about three years earlier when he came to my house with Mike to pick up my sister. Back then they were all friends, I was just 13 and I didn't remember the occasion until many years later when Jed told me.) it will always be the first time I really saw him.
At the pool hall, I don't believe he said a word to me, but I watched him the entire night and felt the strangest possessiveness over him. When other girls talked to him, or when he seemed interested in one of my girlfriends, I felt jealous even though I didn't know him an instant. He was so immature and, much like he is now, didn't have a care in the world. He purposely picked the strangest songs on the jukebox and danced like an asshole with a pool stick in hand. He had the loudest laugh and the warmest smile and he got SO heated and serious about every little thing. To this day I swear, I knew from the MOMENT I met him that he would be important in my life.
After the pool hall the four of us and the huge group we had gathered went back to Mike's house where we drank and danced, played cards and acted like fools. Jed didn't pay much attention to me and by this time I had taken an interest in one of their friends who had similar taste in music as me. He and I ended up drunk in the kitchen discussing why Social Distortion was one of the greatest bands of all time (and lol.) Between this and four AM, I don't remember much. I'm not even sure if it WAS four AM. I do remember making a run to Jed's house for more cigarettes. I wanted to go because the guy I'd been talking to about Social Distortion was driving and because the trip was for Jed. I remember the early AM laying on Mike's bed with him and my friend Valerie. Jed came in and lay his head on me and said "you're comfortable." It was just one of those moments.
Fast forward eight years and ten minutes ago when I was laying beside him thinking about this huge event coming up in our lives. He was sound asleep, I put my hand on his shoulder and got a little misty eyed thinking about everything we've been through together. All the years and fights and good times. Every single detail of my life this man knows right down to my weight! (With much thanks to my nurse Cathy for that one. She spilled the beans at my last appointment when I very discretely tried to get her to tell me how much I had gained WITHOUT saying the number.)
I thought about that moment when the doctor hands us our baby girl and we look at her and think "This is the result of EIGHT YEARS of gut wrenching, heart breaking, mind numbing, suck your soul out, thick as tar, deep as any ocean LOVE." And I'll look at her and see him and GOD, I can't even imagine that moment without feeling like my heart will explode! Because even after all the shit he's put me through. All the craziness he's dealt with from me. Every single time I felt like throwing in the towel, we stuck by each other long enough to create a little person who was actually wanted. We waited until we knew we could care for her. We got to know each other and respected each other and loved one another for so many years before we made her. And It was so hard for me because I wanted to be a mom since I was a child and I would have been happy at sixteen years old if I'd found out I was pregnant. Not because I thought I could take good enough care of a child, but because I just wanted that deep, undying LOVE I mentioned above. But being with Jed for all these years, I have had that and then some.
And when I think back now to all those years between the night we met and this very night, I can't remember every little detail. I SO wish I could. I used to have this mental library of every single important event in our relationship. I used to know how many times we'd had sex! I used to count every month has an anniversary. I was a teenager and I was in love and he was the most important person in the whole world to me.
I knew I loved him before I told him. We had been together ONE MONTH when I told him I loved him. ONE month almost to the DAY.
Rewind back to Mike's house again. His front yard, sometime after midnight and a lot of alcohol. We were standing under a tree and a full moon with my best friend Megan. He kissed me and she said we were "making babies," laughed and ran back into the house.
I asked him to do me a favor. He said name it. I said "You have to stop me if I start to fall in love with you," and he wanted to know why. I told him I was afraid if I told him I loved him, he'd freak out and leave me. He said he wouldn't leave, he promised he wouldn't. A few tears welled up and I said "good because I love you." He smiled and said "Good, because I love you too." And I cried and he held me and I laughed and said "GOD, it's only been a month but I feel like I've wanted to tell you that for so long." We were so excited and it was the silliest moment for a sixteen year old, but it was REAL for me and I KNEW it was right. He was the ONE I was supposed to be with and I vow that to this very instant.
All those years together went by in a flash and I can't remember the greatest details from so many of them. All I know is we had been together three, four, five years and people were starting to ask when we were going to get engaged. I was still so young and while I would have married him in an INSTANT if he'd asked, we always told people we had no intentions of being those foolish kids who get engaged just for the sake of wearing a ring and changing our titles from "boyfriend/girlfriend" to "fiancee." We knew we couldn't afford to get married. We knew we couldn't afford a place of our own and we KNEW if we got married, we'd end up living with one of our parents and being the same dumb kids we always judged in our town.
I NEVER wanted to be pregnant and living at home. I NEVER wanted to be married and living with a parent (of course, we DID end up living with Jed's parents for a little while when we first moved here, but I will argue that the circumstance was completely different as we only did it because we had just made a big move, I needed to find a job and we had to save money.)
When Jed and I finally did get engaged, it wasn't because we had been together long enough that we thought we SHOULD have. I didn't get when people asked when we were getting engaged just because we had been together so long. The duration of our relationship never dictated the steps we took throughout it.
We got engaged and we got married and we moved to Oregon all in less than one year. We were late bloomers but we finally got our shit together, got out of our parent's houses and started living our own lives. Nothing has been more fulfilling than that. Nothing has ever made me feel more human than that.
I love being a wife and I can't wait to be a mother. It amazes me that as long as I've wanted to be a mother, I actually find myself getting really worried about it. I never hesitated to care for my niece and nephew when they were babies. I knew just what to do. And now with my new nephew, Jude, I feel so new again. When Iris comes I'm scared I'll be even worse.
I have a million worries, but I KNOW have to be completely normal, but I can't help feeling like I'm going to mess everything up. I still worry a screaming baby is going to get us kicked out of our apartment. I still worry I wont know how to make her happy. I still worry something awful is going to happen to her or Jed and I wont know how to live anymore.
I worry myself sick every second of every day and I just don't know how to relax and LIVE.
Worry, worry, worry. What a waste.
The doctor told me at my appointment today that nothing had changed as far as dilation goes. Everything is still closed up tighter than a bank on Christmas and he doesn't know WHEN she's coming. I was so anxious to keep her inside before because the thought of NOT being pregnant really scares me. I've had her in here so long, I don't know how NOT to anymore. It will be hard to go back to living life as ONE again when I have been TWO for so very long. Nine months is longer than it seems. As I get closer to my due date, I can't help but get anxious to MEET her. I do have my million worries. Of course. I worry about going into labor, labor, delivery. The world after that. I worry there will be problems, complications, birth marks on her face. I worry about anything you can possibly THINK of and I make myself sick over it because I don't know how to shut my brain off long enough to watch an episode of Little House on the Prairie let ALONE get a good nights rest.
So here it is, almost 3 in the morning and I've been spilling my guts to live journal. It's such a familiar feeling. I've been doing this for how many years?
I've missed it.
My side of the bed sits cold and empty while my dearest husband and father of the living being I'm carrying breaths heavily into the night. I look around at our first apartment. Our first REAL accomplishment and see all the little memories we've created over the last eight years. Pictures and stories. Habits and lifestyles. We're two peas in a pod and yet so ridiculously different. Amazing how that happens.
After all these years and the hundreds of thousands of times he's told me, I truly know he loves me because he allowed a vase of white daisies to sit on his stereo console, even though when we bought them he specifically told me no. He knows I like to have fresh flowers in the living room and that console is the only place they look good. I settled with having them in the dining room and he went and moved them all on his own. And through every single thing we've been through, I'd go back to April of 2001 and do it all over again.
That one moment where he looked at me from over the seat is still completely frozen in my mind. While it wasn't LITERALLY the first time we met (we met about three years earlier when he came to my house with Mike to pick up my sister. Back then they were all friends, I was just 13 and I didn't remember the occasion until many years later when Jed told me.) it will always be the first time I really saw him.
At the pool hall, I don't believe he said a word to me, but I watched him the entire night and felt the strangest possessiveness over him. When other girls talked to him, or when he seemed interested in one of my girlfriends, I felt jealous even though I didn't know him an instant. He was so immature and, much like he is now, didn't have a care in the world. He purposely picked the strangest songs on the jukebox and danced like an asshole with a pool stick in hand. He had the loudest laugh and the warmest smile and he got SO heated and serious about every little thing. To this day I swear, I knew from the MOMENT I met him that he would be important in my life.
After the pool hall the four of us and the huge group we had gathered went back to Mike's house where we drank and danced, played cards and acted like fools. Jed didn't pay much attention to me and by this time I had taken an interest in one of their friends who had similar taste in music as me. He and I ended up drunk in the kitchen discussing why Social Distortion was one of the greatest bands of all time (and lol.) Between this and four AM, I don't remember much. I'm not even sure if it WAS four AM. I do remember making a run to Jed's house for more cigarettes. I wanted to go because the guy I'd been talking to about Social Distortion was driving and because the trip was for Jed. I remember the early AM laying on Mike's bed with him and my friend Valerie. Jed came in and lay his head on me and said "you're comfortable." It was just one of those moments.
Fast forward eight years and ten minutes ago when I was laying beside him thinking about this huge event coming up in our lives. He was sound asleep, I put my hand on his shoulder and got a little misty eyed thinking about everything we've been through together. All the years and fights and good times. Every single detail of my life this man knows right down to my weight! (With much thanks to my nurse Cathy for that one. She spilled the beans at my last appointment when I very discretely tried to get her to tell me how much I had gained WITHOUT saying the number.)
I thought about that moment when the doctor hands us our baby girl and we look at her and think "This is the result of EIGHT YEARS of gut wrenching, heart breaking, mind numbing, suck your soul out, thick as tar, deep as any ocean LOVE." And I'll look at her and see him and GOD, I can't even imagine that moment without feeling like my heart will explode! Because even after all the shit he's put me through. All the craziness he's dealt with from me. Every single time I felt like throwing in the towel, we stuck by each other long enough to create a little person who was actually wanted. We waited until we knew we could care for her. We got to know each other and respected each other and loved one another for so many years before we made her. And It was so hard for me because I wanted to be a mom since I was a child and I would have been happy at sixteen years old if I'd found out I was pregnant. Not because I thought I could take good enough care of a child, but because I just wanted that deep, undying LOVE I mentioned above. But being with Jed for all these years, I have had that and then some.
And when I think back now to all those years between the night we met and this very night, I can't remember every little detail. I SO wish I could. I used to have this mental library of every single important event in our relationship. I used to know how many times we'd had sex! I used to count every month has an anniversary. I was a teenager and I was in love and he was the most important person in the whole world to me.
I knew I loved him before I told him. We had been together ONE MONTH when I told him I loved him. ONE month almost to the DAY.
Rewind back to Mike's house again. His front yard, sometime after midnight and a lot of alcohol. We were standing under a tree and a full moon with my best friend Megan. He kissed me and she said we were "making babies," laughed and ran back into the house.
I asked him to do me a favor. He said name it. I said "You have to stop me if I start to fall in love with you," and he wanted to know why. I told him I was afraid if I told him I loved him, he'd freak out and leave me. He said he wouldn't leave, he promised he wouldn't. A few tears welled up and I said "good because I love you." He smiled and said "Good, because I love you too." And I cried and he held me and I laughed and said "GOD, it's only been a month but I feel like I've wanted to tell you that for so long." We were so excited and it was the silliest moment for a sixteen year old, but it was REAL for me and I KNEW it was right. He was the ONE I was supposed to be with and I vow that to this very instant.
All those years together went by in a flash and I can't remember the greatest details from so many of them. All I know is we had been together three, four, five years and people were starting to ask when we were going to get engaged. I was still so young and while I would have married him in an INSTANT if he'd asked, we always told people we had no intentions of being those foolish kids who get engaged just for the sake of wearing a ring and changing our titles from "boyfriend/girlfriend" to "fiancee." We knew we couldn't afford to get married. We knew we couldn't afford a place of our own and we KNEW if we got married, we'd end up living with one of our parents and being the same dumb kids we always judged in our town.
I NEVER wanted to be pregnant and living at home. I NEVER wanted to be married and living with a parent (of course, we DID end up living with Jed's parents for a little while when we first moved here, but I will argue that the circumstance was completely different as we only did it because we had just made a big move, I needed to find a job and we had to save money.)
When Jed and I finally did get engaged, it wasn't because we had been together long enough that we thought we SHOULD have. I didn't get when people asked when we were getting engaged just because we had been together so long. The duration of our relationship never dictated the steps we took throughout it.
We got engaged and we got married and we moved to Oregon all in less than one year. We were late bloomers but we finally got our shit together, got out of our parent's houses and started living our own lives. Nothing has been more fulfilling than that. Nothing has ever made me feel more human than that.
I love being a wife and I can't wait to be a mother. It amazes me that as long as I've wanted to be a mother, I actually find myself getting really worried about it. I never hesitated to care for my niece and nephew when they were babies. I knew just what to do. And now with my new nephew, Jude, I feel so new again. When Iris comes I'm scared I'll be even worse.
I have a million worries, but I KNOW have to be completely normal, but I can't help feeling like I'm going to mess everything up. I still worry a screaming baby is going to get us kicked out of our apartment. I still worry I wont know how to make her happy. I still worry something awful is going to happen to her or Jed and I wont know how to live anymore.
I worry myself sick every second of every day and I just don't know how to relax and LIVE.
Worry, worry, worry. What a waste.
The doctor told me at my appointment today that nothing had changed as far as dilation goes. Everything is still closed up tighter than a bank on Christmas and he doesn't know WHEN she's coming. I was so anxious to keep her inside before because the thought of NOT being pregnant really scares me. I've had her in here so long, I don't know how NOT to anymore. It will be hard to go back to living life as ONE again when I have been TWO for so very long. Nine months is longer than it seems. As I get closer to my due date, I can't help but get anxious to MEET her. I do have my million worries. Of course. I worry about going into labor, labor, delivery. The world after that. I worry there will be problems, complications, birth marks on her face. I worry about anything you can possibly THINK of and I make myself sick over it because I don't know how to shut my brain off long enough to watch an episode of Little House on the Prairie let ALONE get a good nights rest.
So here it is, almost 3 in the morning and I've been spilling my guts to live journal. It's such a familiar feeling. I've been doing this for how many years?
I've missed it.
My side of the bed sits cold and empty while my dearest husband and father of the living being I'm carrying breaths heavily into the night. I look around at our first apartment. Our first REAL accomplishment and see all the little memories we've created over the last eight years. Pictures and stories. Habits and lifestyles. We're two peas in a pod and yet so ridiculously different. Amazing how that happens.
After all these years and the hundreds of thousands of times he's told me, I truly know he loves me because he allowed a vase of white daisies to sit on his stereo console, even though when we bought them he specifically told me no. He knows I like to have fresh flowers in the living room and that console is the only place they look good. I settled with having them in the dining room and he went and moved them all on his own. And through every single thing we've been through, I'd go back to April of 2001 and do it all over again.