The Story of a Boy...

So...he's moving in.

My Boy...

How do I do this?

Can I do this?

The actual date is not confirmed, but at some point in the next few months, I will merge my life with someone else's...again. Someone different. Someone I met by chance, who took a chance on me...us.  In a few short months I will have this newfangled family and I'm...terrified.

We are not wet behind the ears, he and I. We bring baggage. Lots of it. We're not naive. We know exactly how hard it's going to be. Therein lies the rub. There is nothing unwitting or ignorant involving this union. It is wide-eyed acceptance of...everything. And there is so much...

I've written about Boy before, focusing mostly on the generosity, the love, the passion...and all of that remains as true and steadfast as the day we met. There is no other like him. But, what remains untold is what we are taking on for each other. Our pasts. In order to make it, to give a go at the long haul, we've had to come to terms with what has brought us here. My story is rather benign. College sweethearts marry, have children, divorce, remain friends. The story is tired. Yet, his is not. It's ripe with heartache and despair. It's the stuff of movies. Yet, it's not. It's real. It is a tale told tenderly and I've carried the details delicately in my heart for the last few years. I've listened and tried not to pry until, at some point, a nearly complete picture was entrusted to me. I'm grateful for the trust that has allowed me to, now, put it down in words.

What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, was written for him. Son of an intensely abusive alcoholic, he recalls "getting his ass beat" on a regular basis. Nothing in particular, and everything, would set off his father. They lived in fear. His mother, intensely protective of Boy and his brother, whisked them away in the middle of the night. Her jaw broken by his raging fist for the last time. He never saw or heard from his father again. The man he calls father today is his stepfather who adopted and raised him and his brother as his own. It was years before he realized that his adopted name was not his given name...

...and so he was, Boy...born out of abuse and saved by a mother who had the strength and sense to want a better life for her sons. Throughout his youth he was a reckless risk-taker. A tempter of fate. A Casanova. A firecracker, barely able to be contained. A juvenile delinquent with a heart of gold. He tested and stretched every limit and wooed every girl that couldn't tear themselves away from his baby blues. And then he met her...

...she was beautiful and so very smart. Intimidated by her intellect and affinity for the finer things, he didn't speak to her for months after their first date. Regardless, fate took it's course and their young love affair began. He was enamored with her laugh...her smile...and he proposed as so many often do when that unmistakable feeling overrides logic. They married outside on a lovely May afternoon and life was at it was intended to be. Until it wasn't...

...she was beset by a crippling depression, one she hid during their courtship and early marriage. When the dust settled on their early tenure as husband and wife, she laid down and cried. And he carried her and loved her and tried to save her. Until he couldn't. Feeling exhausted from bearing and living the life of another human being, he left. Just for a while. A breather. A break from a young life burdened with too much grown up responsibility. He worried about her and checked in on her and then he found her. Alone and unable to bear a life that life had not given her a mind to bear...she took that life. And left him to discover the ruin. In a running car in a garage that once belonged to a house that love inhabited, he found that love snuffed out. By her own hand. It crippled him and broke him and he lost...faith...in love...for the second time...for a very long time...

...and yet that wasn't all, but that's all for now. So, you see, it's never been just he and I. It's been us. The ghosts of the past included. Paid in full. Over the last three years we talked about how we're going to incorporate the pain of the past into a future filled with promise. We take it with us. We use it to grow as a couple. We acknowledge that what they did to him, they did to us. And we carry it. I've never met anyone like him. Like a phoenix, he's been resurrected from nothing more than once. Incredibly strong and optimistic...I admire his outlook. I also know he didn't choose me with a light heart. He chose a partner who could carry and share the weight of what got him here. Gladly, my love. Gladly....