The other day when I was driving in the car and flipping through radio stations, I came across “Don’t Blink” right when it started. I listed to the whole song and cried quietly the entire time. Having an 88 year old grandmother during a pandemic has caused me a great deal of fear and stress. I have only seen her once – and that was mainly because I was needed for her mental health reasons – it is really hard for her to stay alone.
I have been trying to concentrate on taking my medicine daily. Once I went to work from home in mid March, my entire routine was thrown off. I no longer got ready for work – I just rolled out of bed. When I started to panic about her working with him again and being quarantined with him and just everything with him and nothing with me – I started to get really worried, jealous – I don’t even know what but I seem to be back to my ‘loving – I don’t care about any of the details as long as she is living the life that she wants to’ self.
Basically, why I mentioned this song, “Don’t Blink” is because it made me cry when I was driving. I rarely listen to an entire new song – things really have to grow on me, but it was reminding me of what I already knew. We had already been discussing how my niece, who was 1 when we met, is a whole ass kid at this point with a 5 year old little brother. It only added to the perspective.
When I found out that there was a cave less than 100 miles away that people got married in, first I joked to the original poster that I was going to get married in her cave and then I ran off to my love to tell her all about it. She responded perfectly, and I like to think that she knows exactly what I am shyly hinting at. Next month will be 7 years since I met her and though I know that it is insane by today’s standards, I really do want to ask her to marry me. I don’t think that either of us really live by anyone’s standards and you can say that we dance to the beat of a different drum, but I sure wish that I could pull off meeting her in the exact spot that we met 7 years ago – I would walk there all dressed up – hopefully she would show up unsuspecting, but I am.. predictable to say the least. I have never even thought about proposing to anyone before. I grew up knowing that marriage was not for me and it would never happen so don’t glorify it.
My mom left when I was 2 – that is many years of watching my father struggle and hearing that you can’t depend on anyone but yourself. He was broken and couldn’t even consider dating or trying again. With that said, I grew up with a very young father that had little to no money. By at least 5 years old, I knew that no one had any extra money to give me for any reason – so don’t even think about asking.
In high school, my friends started fantasizing about their weddings, telling me all about where they were going to get married and what they were going to wear. These were all teenage girls that had no serious boyfriends but they knew that they were getting married one day and no better day than 14 years old to start planning it. At the time, I was realizing that not only was I poor but I was also gay – now I would never have money for a wedding nor was it even legal. I knew what a civil union was, this was the late 90s – but I also knew that I would never have any support from anyone.
So basically, I stopped thinking about it. I was actually already in love with this lady once it started becoming legal.
Well – there were a few states long ago. I remember hearing about Virginia on the radio when I was in the car as a kid, but that may have been the start of civil unions. When I saw that Colorado had legalized gay marriage, which it an awful phrase but it gets my point across – I texted her immediately. She told me something like ‘they know whats up in CO.’
At this point gay marriage and marijuana was legal in CO, I don’t think that many could disagree with whatever her statement was. Now it is still legal, even after Trump has ripped apart the nation, so I better jump on it. I can’t say that I don’t think of how I would ask her to marry me way more often that I would expect and it scares the shit out of me every time, but I think that is how it is supposed to go and we should probably go somewhere amazing to do it – not the side of the road but sometimes you have to work with what is possible. The dang Alanis Morisette concert was the day before that day so I thought it was guaranteed that I would spend it with her but those plans got jumbled to say the least.
Oh yes, and last night I had this dream that was replaying a moment from the past where I reached down to grab her hands and she interlaced her fingers in both my hands and – well – I must say, it’s what my dreams are made of.
Here are some sad country songs –