Our Story, Part 1...

I've been feeling for a while that I need to write down Dean's and my story for our family history books, for our children and grandchildren to know and understand how their parents/grandparents ended up together.  But I realized that I needed to give some back story because there are some key people along the way that set me on some necessary paths to get to Dean that will help you to understand who I am, how I've changed over the years, and why Dean is the best man I've ever met and how he's perfect for me.  I didn't want to write a short love story "We met at church, dated, married, had a baby 3 years later....", that's too vague for my tastes.  I want my posterity to know WHY I love Dean, and why we go perfectly together.

Our Story, Part 1

High school.  I look back and think, “Man, was I seriously that naive?   Did I really wear that outfit thinking I was cute? Did I really ever think of anyone but myself? Why did I think that Jennifer Aniston haircut would look good on me?  Why did I not give any thought toward college? Why did I date that guy and think that he was the epitome of all men I’d ever meet.”

High school.  More specifically, The High School Boyfriend.  He liked me for a long time.  I knew I hung the sun, moon, and stars in his eyes, and I milked it for all it was worth to get him to worship me even though we weren’t dating.  I didn’t reciprocate for a while but he was persistent.  Finally, my feelings started to change, and he was my first kiss when I was 16.  We were laying out in right field on a little league baseball field, and he was tickling me in the flirtatious way that 16 years old do, and the next thing I knew, he bent over and kissed me.  My very first kiss!! I saw fireworks on the back of my eyelids!! I thought it was amazing! I wanted it to last forever because my lips had never known such exhilaration!!  But he pulled away within a couple of seconds and standoffishly said, “Umm, are you ready to go home?”   Well, hmmm, this is awkward.  Ok.  He drove me home in silence, and the block before we reached my house he pulled to the side of the road and put the car in park and turned to me.  “Do you want me to teach you how to kiss? “  Wow.  I was unbelievably insulted but I was even more eager to experience the heavenly and foreign sensation of kissing again.  “Uhh, sure.”  He then proceeded to give me instructions on how to “turn your head this way, don’t kiss too hard, not too much tongue, don’t open your mouth very wide.”  We then practiced a couple of times and it was magical. I could tell I mastered it very quickly because suddenly he had stars in his eyes and his breathing changed to that of wanting more, he was now pursuing MY kisses.  But I still had enough of my senses about me that I knew I needed to say when so I asked him to drop me off in front of my house.  I smiled, gave him a quick kiss, and then exited his car. 

 

We kissed a few more times after that.  But I suddenly I decided wasn’t ready to be in a steady relationship so I put the kibosh on the whole shebang, but I still made sure to string him along enough with being flirtatious to ensure that I was still the only girl in his universe.  It worked.  After months and months, my hormonal teenage brain decided that I was starting to have feelings for him again.  Lo and behold, we ended up an official item.

 

We fell fast and hard for one another.  We placed ourselves in our own little cocoon where just the two of us were, googly eyes and all, and everything else was static.  Family and friends were now suddenly put on the backburner.  We planned our school schedule together so we could have as many classes together as possible.  When we were seniors we planned our late start schedule together. Every morning he would come and pick me up between 6 and 7 a.m., we would drive back over to his house, and either cuddle up and fall back asleep, play videos games, eat, watch a movie, make out, or do homework until it was time to drive to school together at almost 11.  There simply weren’t enough minutes in the day for us to be together.  He would leave my house as late as possible every night or I would do the same at his, and then we’d start the process as early as possible the next morning.   We were inseparable.

I loved his parents.  He liked mine. 

But along with dating and making sure that we were able to squeeze as many minutes together as possible together every day, there came sacrifices.  I sacrificed church.  Not entirely because of him or the fact that I didn’t believe in it, I still did and he wasn’t asking me not to go. Looking back, the excuses I had of stopping going are so topical.  The other girls my age that I went to church with made me feel like an outcast.  I never had a solid group of church gal pals and heaven knows I tried with the popular group, the nerdy group, the shy group, the pessimistic group, I just simply never fit in with any of them and could never forge any strong bonds with any of them.  I wasn’t sleeping around during the week and coming to church and putting on the goodie goodie face for all the adults to see like some of the girls, and the very fact that they were doing that disgusted me.  I wasn’t solid in my belief system, basically meaning I didn’t have the conviction to defend my beliefs before a jury, but I still believed, I just chose to be a fence sitter.  I still would go every once in a while, but when High School Boyfriend and I got together and our time together was more precious than anything, he was the final excuse I needed to quit going completely.   

Even though I stopped going to church doesn’t mean that I abandoned all of my beliefs and denounced them.  I wasn’t out drinking or smoking or doing drugs, and I can still happily say that I’ve never done any of those.  I still believed in God and Jesus.  I still believed in the LDS Church.  Sadly, I just let another person become more important than all of that and told myself that I would go back one day, maybe.

High School Boyfriend was an avid baseball player and played for school and a rec team so baseball was life.  I was so smitten that I eventually learned most Major League players names and I resigned myself to the fact that we would watch Sportscenter every night and tons of games on television.  He played in  games on Sunday, he said he needed me at all of his games for support, and of course with that I felt I was needed to be in the bleachers cheering him on more than I needed to be in a pew in church, he didn’t have to twist my arm.  I don’t think I missed more than 3 of his games in the entire time we were together and let me just tell you, he played in A LOT of games.

We still hung out with friends as time would permit.  Our friends used to make fun of him because he would almost get frantic if I got up and was not next to him for 5 minutes.  We had this need to be touching all the time but he almost smothered me sometimes which I viewed as unfiltered adoration.

He was good to me.  He never ever hit or verbally abused me or made me feel less than the most beautiful girl in the world.  He respected me. He never cheated on me. He spoke the world of me to everyone that he knew.  We only fought over petty things that teenager couples do and only had a couple doozey fights. His parents adored me and wanted me to have their grandbabies.

Time pressed on.  School days came and went.  We were a pretty well known couple in our grade because we’d been together for so long and because we were attached at the hip.  Eventually the other brilliant 17 and 18 year olds in our grade started asking if we were going to get married after high school and would comment on how we’d have really cute babies, etc.  Well, we hadn’t really thought or talked about that.  At the end of our senior year we did start to talk about marriage.  Would we get married?  Well, we were so in love that we said we would eventually.  We threw around the idea of getting hitched by the time we were 20.  There was no real game plan and it wasn’t something we dwelt upon, it was more so something that we’d deal with when the time got closer but we would still casually and yet sometimes excitedly talk about it.  

When I looked at him, I never ever wanted to have babies with him.  I was completely against having kids, ever.  And there was something about him that drove that nail in even further with not wanting to have kids, especially with him.  We wanted it to be just he and I in our little cocoon forever with no distractions.  We were both going to get great jobs and travel the world together and buy all the toys and gadgets we pleased and life would be grand.

We were madly in love and even looking back now, he is in almost every single memory I have from my junior and senior year of high school.  

After graduation he made a decision that would change my life for the better although I didn’t know it at the time.  He was given the opportunity to move to the middle of Washington to possibly play for a community college team, which in his mind was just the first step towards making it to the Major Leagues. I was devastated. The only thing was he was working his way through a broken wrist and he just never got back the strength that he needed to play to his potential.  His parents were footing the bill for him so it was no problem for him to move over, but I was jobless and penniless and my parents refused to help financially to move over there so I was stuck on this side of the mountains for the time being.  I eventually told him I supported him going because I wanted him to pursue his dreams so I tearfully said goodbye as he drove eastward.  We talked on the phone for hours and hours every day, and I would drive over on the weekends and spend the weekend there with him.  One Friday he and I were talking on the phone and he said it was too painful to do the long distance relationship game and he said he needed to focus on baseball and not me.  My little filly heart was shattered.  I couldn’t convince him otherwise so I just sobbed as much as my body could take for 2 solid days. 

Just two days after High School Boyfriend and I had broken up, on Sunday morning my Mom came into my room and suggested that I go to church like she had been suggesting to me for a couple of years. I hadn’t been in a long long time.  Since I was now graduated from high school, there was a special congregation for young single adults that I could go to, and I figured what the heck, I have no Boyfriend to take up all of my time now so I might as well go because otherwise I’ll just sit at home and cry all day. 

That suggestion from my Mom changed the course of my life.