Undaunted and Bold Reader!
What if you had never left your home town? What if you had married the person you first fell in love with?
What would your life be like now?
Freud, himself, asked these questions. . . . So:
HOW old were you when love first hit?
WHERE were you?
WHO was your first love?
And WHAT would your life be now if you were still together?
Me? I would have lived a happy, tranquil, very entertaining life as the wife of a swim coach—and would never have HEARD of Bergdorf Goodman!!
I was 23. He was 37. He was suave and smooth and a charmer. He was also an alcoholic. I even said yes to his marriage proposal My mom KNEW how wrong our relationship was but she stayed quiet. I knew I was going to go through with the wedding. I had to. The invitations had been sent out. Gifts were arriving….. and then 16 days before our wedding he said something so awful to me I knew then I just couldn’t marry him. It was a Friday morning. I went to work in tears. In the late morning I called my maid of honor who was my best friend and I told her I just couldn’t go through with it but if I changed my mind and did marry him please don’t hate me. Then I made the call to my mom and told her. He and I were living together at the time. My mom said meet me at your apartment. She met me there with a box of trash bags and said we are moving you out. We were throwing my things in garbage bags and dropping them off the balcony so we didn’t have to carry them down three flights of steps. She had me 100% moved out before I went to his office to tell him in person. This was 40 years ago. If I had married him I would probably be a widow because I’m pretty sure he could drink himself to death. I have been married to the same amazing man now for almost 36 years and have 2 amazing sons and 1 gorgeous grandson.
What happened after I told him…. My mom sent back all of the gifts but had all of our family come anyway 2 weeks later. and we had a thank goodness she didn’t marry him party.
First love...hmmmm. I suppose I would have to tell you that I first fell in love with a twenty-year-old man when I was fifteen. He was the spitting image of my dad, someone I felt didn't love me enough. But this man did...this man who was also a felon, on parole for grand theft auto. And...plot twist! We did get married! And I was only sixteen. When I was seventeen I gave him his first born son, but by then he was in and out of our lives, mostly out, and finally permanently out. I know how my life would have gone had we stayed married because many years later, after I found out he had died, I got a full report on his life from his sister. He had never changed. He continued to lie, manipulate, and crime his way through life, casting off one woman after the next. I found his grave. My present husband helped me find the tiny marker on a hillside outside of Mt. Hood, OR, a beautiful spot...I should be so lucky. But instead of a headstone, I found a typed piece of paper with his nickname instead of his birth name under a piece of plastic stuck in the ground. My husband walked away and left me there to say my piece. "I'm sorry, Ron, for what has happened in your life, and I know that the things you did were your way of assuaging the pain you felt from the childhood abuse you experienced. I hope you are in a beautiful place now, healing from all that and being the person you were meant to be all along. Your son is a beautiful and amazing man and you would be proud." Then I walked back to the truck and got in, and hugged the man who I'm beyond thankful to have met later...the one who gave me a joyful life.