LJ Idol S5 Topic 1 - Saying Goodbye

I didn’t really say goodbye.  I just left. 

I have a tendency to do that. 

He swept me off my feet.  He flashed that smile, walked up in front to me, grabbed me in a big bear hug and that was it for me.  I was in love.  No, it was lust.  But, lust to an eighteen-year-old virgin looks an awful lot like love.

At least he asked me to marry him before he managed to knock me up.

Telling my grandparents, who’d raised me to not have sex before marriage, who’d eyed my love suspiciously, who’d been cold and distant and perpetually in 1955, was the hardest thing I’d ever done.  I told them the day after Christmas, the day after we started planning for the wedding.

I was nineteen, putting myself through college on scholarships and grants.  College was a big deal for me, I firmly believed in breaking the cycle of poverty, of bad situations and getting an education was the way to do that. 

My new family didn’t understand that.  I didn’t listen to them.  That winter I was going to school for 18 hours a week and working part time 15 hours a week.  I was away from home most of the time and just trying to make it work.  Everyone thought I’d give up and quit.  No one really knew me as well as they thought they did.

I miscarried shortly before the wedding.  I didn’t say goodbye.  I just felt relief.

We went ahead with the wedding because we were young and in love and once you leave home, you never can go back again. 

My mother-in-law planned the wedding right down to the napkins.  I went through everything that day in a daze.  My best friend, my maid of honor, asked me while she was fixing my hair and makeup if I was okay, that I didn’t have to go through with it if I didn’t feel ready.  I laughed her questions off, chalked it up to nerves and went ahead with it, smiling on the outside, numb on the inside.  As my grandfather walked me down the aisle, he told me we didn’t have to go down, we could turn around and walk out.  I just smiled.  I was an adult, I’d made my choices and I couldn’t back out now.  He of all people should have realized that; he raised me that way. 

We couldn’t afford with time or money a honeymoon, but we spent the night in a hotel in a town 30 miles away.  As soon as we returned home and I put my suitcase down, I knew I’d made a mistake. 

I gave it my best for the next three years - focusing on my coursework, focusing on making enough money to support us since he never could hold a job, trying to keep from getting pregnant, trying to be the kind of wife my mother-in-law expected me to be.  But I was always going after things that didn’t matter.

I graduated college with a double degree and was offered a job with a salary and a career track.  I wanted a home that wasn’t on wheels, stability, safety, security.  I wanted to love my husband, I wanted him to respect me and I wanted us to have our own lives.  We could have had that then.  He wanted to remain on the path of least resistance and I was always resisting. 

So, I signed on the line, I took my name back and I moved forward.  But, I never said goodbye. 

Goodbye.