Blast from the Past

The other day when I was at the courthouse in my normal course of business I had a nice chat with one of the ladies that works over there. She's been there for a bijillion years but she just recently transferred to a different department. We get along ok, she's older and has girls about the same age as me. While chatting we discovered (alas - remembered) that her youngest daughter and I had something in common - a boy.

Her daughter dated the same guy I did. She dated him before me and they had been apart for nearly a year when he and I started dating. *God I loved him* He was a farm boy and at that time there was nothing I wanted more than to be married to him and pop out kid after adorable kid. We were almost engaged, until I told him I was going to go away to school.

See, that's where he got burned by this other girl. She went off to WIU but they kept dating. He would go there or she would come home most weekends in the beginning. Then she started making excuses about why she couldn't come home or why it would be a waste for him to go there. He missed her so much that one weekend he decided to hop in his truck and make the over 3 hour trip there and surprise her. You guessed it - he was the one who was surprised, he found her with another guy.

Fast forward to our relationship. We were together for almost 2 years when the time came for me to head off to EIU. I told him how I felt, that I would stay home and not pursue my career/education if it meant we would stay together. I tried to make him understand that I wasn't her and that I would never, could never, do what she did to him. It was pointless - in the end we broke up 2 days before I went to school. I cried like a baby for nearly a week.

We kept in touch. His mom passed away from a long struggle with leukemia while we were together. He was young, 20ish, and he was devastated when she passed. It was hard on all of us - she was a wonderful, strong, courageous, determined, amazing woman. He took to my mom almost immediately and she in turn filled the void the death of his mother created. So, while I was away at school being miserable without him, he was having dinner with my family almost weekly. No kidding. There were times when I would come home for the weekend and mom would say "make sure you're around on Saturday night, we're having a family dinner" and sure enough - he was there. Those nights were hard for me. I was so happy to see him and it was as if we always picked up right where we left off emotionally. Then I would have to turn around and head back to school and know that because of that we weren't together. He came to visit me at school a few times. It was good, incredible.

He came to realize that I wasn't like her. But, like her, I lived in a co-ed dorm. Mine was all upper-classman and all suites. I lived with 3 other girls and we had a living room, 2 bedrooms and a bathroom in our suite. On one side of us were 6 guys, on the other were 3 guys, and across the hall were 6 guys. I had boy friends but never a boyfriend.

In the end - we went our separate ways. I married my loser ex-husband and he married his everybody-thought-she-was-a-dyke ex-wife. He's remarried. I'm remarried.

I saw him last in September of 2000. I was 6 months pregnant with my daughter. We ran into each other at the annual festival parade and talked for merely a few minutes. He told me I'd never looked more beautiful - I still remember how that made me feel. It was by far one of the kindest things anyone said to the pregnant me when I felt like I had swallowed an oversized watermelon.

I haven't seen him since. Oh sure, he and mom still chat from time to time. She brings him up to speed about where I am, how I'm doing, how old my daughter is. And she tells me she saw/talked to him and he asked how I was, said hello, etc.

Monday afternoon I had an email from classmates.com that someone had signed my guestbook ~ it was him.

Strange. It was Monday when Connie and I were talking about him and reminiscing about how wonderful he was then. I haven't been back over there since, but when I go again I'm going to make sure I tell Connie that happened. It's too deja vu for me.