Dear Emily,
I grew up spoiled -- the youngest and only girl surrounded by seven brothers. It helped that I was a bit pretty and volu-ble.
In high school, I barely passed my subjects because I was lazy and hardly opened my books when I got home. I knew my teachers would give me passing grades because my parents got them as my private tutors as well. My classmates were astounded when I passed the college entrance exam in university. But once accepted, I went back to my old habit of not studying.
I had no focus and grasped at any course that looked easy. I didn’t finish the requirements and was embarrassed at be-ing left behind by graduating friends, who immediately landed careers or started families.
My parents let me travel for a year and gain some focus in life. I stayed with friends and saw how mature they’d become, working hard for a living and even sending money home to their parents. Feeling guilty just bumming around, I got a job as a typist (no PCs or iPad then), telephone operator and occasional messenger. I welcomed all the menial work I could find because for once I felt useful.
In one of those jobs, I found a guy who, at our first meeting, got so smitten by me. We became inseparable from day one. Sex at that time was still a no-no till marriage, so we just went to movies, spent weekends with friends, or went to bars. He was caring, generous and loved me so much, he could have kissed the floor I walked on. He proposed after six months with an engagement ring -- tiny, he described it, with a little imperfection, like me.
But my year abroad was up and my father told me to come home and finish college. My boyfriend and I had a teary goodbye and promised to see each other “very soon.”
On my second day home, I met a guy who swept me off my feet and wanted to marry me “immediately”! He was almost as intense as, almost a clone of, the guy I left behind. Never did I dream they’d be as different as night and day. I got hooked. But it was too late to make a run for it, escape, or disappear.
Soon I got pregnant, and got married reluctantly.(Remember the family’s honor!) It was downhill from there.
The guy I left behind continued writing and begging me to return. But I didn’t have the nerve to leave my little child.
My husband played around. And so did I -- to keep my sanity, I felt.
The guy and I found each other again years later, but he was already married. He implored that we be together, but I didn’t want him to hurt his wife because she didn’t deserve it. We continue to talk and he has remained the loving person I first met.
My husband has passed on. Despite our acrimonious relationship, affairs included, I look back at our past in a haze and do not feel any of the bitterness. It is now covered by the fog of my lovely childhood - magnified by my family’s indul-gence toward me.
Emily says:
This looks more like the story of the guy you left behind and your unceasing devotion to each other. Love stories like this do happen once in a blue moon. But yours has continued between two people oceans apart. Your connection is not broken, and that’s more than enough to keep memories alive and warm in times of loneliness and sickness.
You and your husband played around because you both needed it. Nobody was wrong or right there. Sometimes it takes three or four to make one marriage stand.
There must have been something wonderful to remember about your husband, too! You loved each other once. You made love once with such passion that produced your beautiful boy. Probably your life with him had bits and pieces of happiness that may not come out as an enormous novel, but enough to make you smile and recall awesome moments with tenderness.
As they say, there are always two sides to an apple, matter how thinly you slice it.
Email your story to emarcelo629@gmail com.