childhood sweethearts

Did you have one?

I didn't, not really.  There was a kid in my third grade class named Eugene.  He was what passed as my bestest friend in the world until my parents decided we had to move about 10 states away to a town where I had no friends.  Age 8 really was a traumatic year for me.

I don't know anyone close to me who married a childhood sweetheart.  Most people I know met their mate later in life, often college, rarely high school, and sometimes later in life.  But I have read those stories, and there is often a little pang.  To know, so young, at least one of the directions you'd be going in life?  What would that be like?  Does it take the mystery out of things, or just create different mysteries?

I am at the stage in my life where if I wanted to marry and have children, I would be getting desperate.  My ovaries only remind me of their existence once a month a brief spring of pain, just to remind me of the reproductive potential I'm wasting (or to pay me back for Eve's hunger for an apple, some believe).  And while I am not jealous of my married friends on a regular basis, I do occasionally read stories of people who have loved and been with their partners since what seems like the dawn of adulthood.  My life would be so different if that had been the case.

Now, I am single by choice -- the mistake of marriage has been on the table in the past, and as those relationships are not part of my current life in really any shape, I am more than glad I never made it.

I have done wonderful, amazing, and happy things single.  I have dated interesting (and deadly dull) people, had interesting experiences, and built my own life.  But it is occasionally lonely to be on your own, to not be sharing the journey with a chosen partner.  It is especially keen-edged when it's all new once again.  This doesn't invalidate any of my life in any way.  It's merely an acknowledgement that there are different paths that I might have gone down in life.

I wonder about the couples married for 50 or even a shocking 75 years.  What stories, both joyous and painful, gut-wrenching and side-splitting they must have!  That is a thing about stories: you can tell them to anyone, but telling them to and with someone else who was there exponentially increases the experience.  What is it like to know that this person in front of you is the one you've chosen to build a life with?  To know that someone's "got your 6" as a friend used to say (your back)?

Still, I've built a life.  I am not opposed to the idea of sharing it, but I am unwilling to compromise and settle and choose someone just to have chosen.  It is not a mistake to be alone.  It would be a mistake to choose the wrong someone.  In being on my own, I've been able to take opportunities that may have caused hardship had I been considering someone else's needs and feelings the entire time.

It has taken me years to realize that wondering how things could have been different isn't an indictment of my current life and past choices so much as it is an exploration of those and a foundation for future choices.  I am seeing that trusting my gut instincts is usually the right thing to do, and it leads me where I need to go more often than not.