Looking

It's not that I wasn't loved as a child at home growing up.  I was.  I never felt like I was good enough but I was always loved.  My brother was more athletic than I was.  I was overweight and he was much slimmer.  I took after Mom's side of the family and he took after Dad's.  If there was more than one choice, chances are I'd make the wrong one.  I was always bad at decisions.  My brother was more analytical and logical, but I ran on pure emotion.

I was unfair to my brother.  I blamed him for the way our parents treated him better than they treated me.  I had so many rules and restrictions to live by that I went out of my way to break them or do just the opposite of what was expected of me.  Of course, he could do no wrong.  Not that he didn't make any mistakes mind you.  They just weren't the major screw ups that mine were.

Relationships, Lord where do I even start on that one?  I wanted so much for someone to love me that I wanted to give them anything to make them love me.  I shelled out money, went places, did things, all to make some guy love me.  And the one thing they all seemed to want was sex.  I started to equate love with the act of sex.  Surely if I gave a guy sex, he'd love me.  I wanted someone to look at me the way my dad looked at my mom.  It took me a very long time to figure out that look doesn't come from having sex with someone.  It's a far deeper and different kind of intimacy.

Of course my mom never understood this problem.  As I said before, she married my dad young so she never had to date around to find her Prince Charming.  I put up with so much garbage from men just to keep them around and I was ashamed of it, but I couldn't stop it.  I was desperate for that love I was seeking.  On the outside I looked like any other young woman, just trying to get by in this thing called life.  On the inside I was slowly falling apart, wondering if I would ever find what I was looking for, what I craved desperately and whole-heartedly from within my very soul.

My constant search for love consumed me.  I was so self absorbed in my search, I neglected my children.  My needs outweighed theirs.  I wasn't the mother they wanted, needed, or deserved.  Two little people who loved me unconditionally wasn't enough for me, or I just plain didn't see it.  They still love me now but they resent me for not being there when they needed me, and who can blame them?  I know I could have done better by them, and should have.

And it's not even like I never found love.  I did.  I was just too blind to see it when it did come along. I dated a couple of men who treated me really well and I'm sure they did love me.  For some stupid reason, I seemed intent on going back to the jerks who treated me badly.  My first husband loved me.  I know that now.  I might even have known that then, I'm not entirely sure.  But I took advantage of him and never appreciated his love so I ended up pushing him away.  My second husband was just a flat out mistake.  I married him, not because I truly loved him, but because I was tired of being alone.  He was there, he asked me to marry him, so I said "yes".  Big mistake.

By the time I met my third and present husband, I was so jaded and so tired of games, I was almost ready to just give up altogether.  I was totally honest and completely blunt with him.  About how I felt, what I wanted, what I expected and where I wanted things to go in my life.  And you know what?  He loved that about me.  He fell head over heels in love with me.  We knew each other less than a month when we got married but in that time I knew more about him than I knew about people I'd known for years.

I had spent the better part of my life at this point trying to appease people, giving them what I thought they wanted.  But with this man I could be honest.  He didn't judge me.  He didn't look down on me.  He didn't question my motives.  He just loved me.

And I knew he was the one when I saw that look.