At night when I can't sleep, I think of him and how he'll be with our children. I look at the photo I took of him last time we saw each other and I remember how handsome he looks in the clothes I picked out for him. I think of how lucky I am to have him, how strangely right it's turned out to be that I made the decision I wasn't sure of way back when, to be his and forego the other options that existed.
I was in love with someone else when I met him. I was in love with someone else while we were first dating, and possibly far longer than was prudent. But it was what it was, and I couldn't change it, nor would I, because what I've learned above all else is that some things take time. Some experiences take longer to leave us. Sometimes life overlaps itself. I learned by living that how much he loves me, that he would assuage the fears and hurts wrought by another so patiently, giving me space to be just as I needed to be.
We'll go to Nice on our honeymoon. The last person I was there with was not him; it was the person that I still loved when I met him, when I began to entertain the idea of maybe moving on. My most recent memories of Nice are with another man, and maybe that's partly why I want to go. Because I want Nice to be to me what it has been to me always, since the first time I saw it, which is a little bit of home away from home. I want to love Nice all over again, not associate her with the hurts of the past. I want her to be a good memory, a warm spot, a blissful paradise.
If I could somehow change the past, I would. I look back now on the mistakes I made, the lapses of judgment, the way I might have stepped away more gracefully before it came to what it came to, and I feel a little bit ashamed of myself. I associate that shame, too, with Nice, and I don't want to anymore. And so we will go.
I can't wait. Nice, I am waiting for you. Will you be waiting for me, too?
2007-01-31 - 12:01 a.m.
