My sister and I have a “forward” email only type of sisterhood.  She forwards me funny emails,  I say hello occasionally and that is the extent of our estranged family sisterhood.  I’ve blogged about this ad naseum before.  Last week I was cruising right along with my life as is.  Nothing was amiss.  I was happy and things were good.  And then I got an email from my sister. 

So the email I got from my sister:

From: Tracy [mailto:tracy@***.com]
 
Sent: Wednesday, July 07, 2010 9:49 AM

To: Kristy

Subject:

I think Steve Diamond is in my plant.  He must work for some engineering firm.  Blast from the past…..he looks the same from what I could see of him sitting in the conference room.

Steve Diamond.  I read that name and I was hovering over my desk trying to get ready to go into a leadership development seminar at work and all of the sudden I froze.  I felt like I was 20 years old again. I felt my stomach drop out.  I got cold and clammy and sweaty and then I just wanted to go somewhere and cry.  Instead I went to the leadership development seminar and gazed out the window remembering.

Steve Diamond was/is my first boyfriend. I lost my virginity to that boy.  I have some of the sweetest memories of him and some of the most painful as well.  I loved him.  I have thought I loved other men/boys and I later learned it as infatuation or lust or just plain stupid.  I loved Steve.  I don’t know for certain that I ever stopped except to say I had to stop.  He proposed to me.  I said no.  He married someone else. I knew this because I got married to the ex on May 1, 1991.  I moved back to Johnstown in April of 1993 with 4 month Keith in tow and picked up the newspaper to look for a place to rent.  In the classifieds there it was.  The ad selling that same said engagement ring.  I was newly heartbroken.  My girlfriend called Steve Diamond and inquired about the ring and why he was selling it.  He said it was never worn and “she said no”.  I was the she, I was sitting on that phone line in another room crying.  I was married to someone else.

When I got out of the seminar I did the one thing I’m not certain I would recommend to anyone. I googled his name. I’ve done this before.  This time I landed on a newspaper article about his parents 60^th wedding anniversary.  I smiled.  I always liked his family.  They were everything my own was not.  And then I googled information contained in that article and I landed on a happy smiling family on facebook.  His face, after 20 years.  His wife.  His son.  His daughter.  I cannot even begin to explain or understand the emotions that flooded through me.  There was this melancholy feeling embraced and laced with happiness for him and this sad notion of what might have been had I produced a different answer to his proposal.

I walked around from July 7^th with this background noise in my head.  What if?  Is he happy?  Why do things happen the way they do?  Why oh why did I ever marry my ex? 

I had broken up with Steve. I felt he didn’t spend time with me, I felt like I was pressuring him to comit and that he didn’t want me.  I met my now exhusband and tried to move on.  Steve saw us at a concert and the next memory I have is of him proposing, me asking for time to “think about it” and him denying me that time. Me being so confused what with my mom treating me like crap, him unable to fathom the entire gist of what was really happening. I remember a lot of confusion and I remember having no one to confide in and feeling that it would never work because I couldn’t confide in him…Steve.  I remember after not saying yes..because I don’t remember ever uttering NO….that my Mom kicked me out of the house. I remember calling Steve..or going to him and telling him and he acted or looked dumb founded as if that couldn’t possibly be so.  It was all so heartbreaking.

I went from being a girl who was with her boyfriend of 6 long years, living at home with mom and dad and brother (sister was away at college) working at a record store for minimum wage…to being married, living in Dallas, TX with a man I knew for 3 months with no family and no one. I realized my mistake quickly. I called Steve Diamond and begged him to forgive me, to help me. He told me to call back the next day, to let him think about it.  I called back the next day and he said, “I would but my family would never forgive me”.  I fully understood just how fucked up I had made things and I never held this against him.  Steve Diamond was a good guy.  I was the one that was largely lost, messed up and heartbroken and misunderstood and losing my family and trying to grasp onto him for my life…and I just still couldn’t get beyond feeling that I was so not good enough for him.

All of this angst and memory flew through my head. And then I rememberd I kept a journal. One I hadn’t looked at since my mom kicked me out in Feb of 1991.  I read that journal and I cried. Not for Steve.  I cried for that girl that was so largely lost and so desparately seeking someone to hold her and understand her and get it.  And now that I’m not 20, I realize a lot of things. 

Steve was growing up and going to college and I was clinging to him for dear life.  I never could communicate clearly because I was so lost. I realized my mistake too late.  I went on to try try try to embrace my first marriage and make it work and I felt so much guilt for having married him when I was still so in love with Steve Diamond.  The first year of that marriage I had dreams about Steve.  Then in 1993, the ring ad.  Then shortly thereafter I opened the newspaper again to look for a job and there it was.  He married someone.  I stared at the photo and I put it all to rest.  What was done was so completely done. I remember wishing him well.  But I also remember having a pit the size of Texas in my gut for days.  It is oh so hard to live with your own mistakes.

I firmly believe that had I had a supportive mom, dad…anyone….my choices would have been more relaxed, more intelligent and I would have married him.  I also believe that everything happens for a reason and that I probably wouldn’t have been happy living in Johnstown, PA all of my life. I wanted to roam, to run, to go.  I always wanted to get out.

Now I’m rambling and this is an indication of how this topic makes my brain feel, my heart race, etc.  It causes massive amounts of confusion to rush in.  Even now.  19 years later.  I read that journal and I cried.  Not for wanting Steve but for just wanting to go back and tell that girl that it would one day be ok.  I’ve always wondered if he just went on without thinking of me.  I wondered if I broke his heart because trust me when I say I broke my own when I said no to him.  I thought I was being noble.  Saving him from my 20 year old fucked up unworthy of even her own mother’s love self.  I really thought I was.  I might have robbed myself.  Who can ever know what might have been?

And all these years of wondering and never fully explaining myself to him because I didn’t even understand.  One email, two google searches landing on a seemingly happy family photo containing all the things he said he wanted…the PTA looking mom and a son and a daughter….and wondering if he even thought of me.  I replied to my sister and sent her the happy family photo I found via facebook and my confused feelings about the past etc.  I told her that he looked happy and his wife looked like the perfect PTA mom.  (a woman I never could see myself being good enough to be)

And then today my sister with the less than stellar communication skills sends me this email 7 days later in response.  7 days she left me hanging, feeling angsty and miserable over this.

From: Tracy [mailto:tracy@

Sent: Wednesday, July 14, 2010 10:01 PM

To: Kristy

Subject: RE: PTA mom

Yeah….it appears that it’s a perfect little family, huh?!!!  But you know….things are deceiving on the outside.  Could be completely miserable.  The boy looks like her and the girl like him.  He wore glasses when I saw him.  He was nice.  He asked about everyone….mom, dad, eric.  He’s been with his engineering firm for 14 years he said.  If you married him…you’d be divorced by now.  He asked if you were ok and I said yes and remarried and he seemed genuinely happy about that….  He could be a good actor too….ha!

And what I gleamed was this part “he asked if you were ok”.  And that tells me that for a person to ask that question…I mattered.  And sometimes that’s all you can ask for from love.  That at one point, some innanimate indecipherable point you mattered to the person that mattered to you for so long.  And that brings me to tears even typing it.  Steve Diamond…you always mattered.  I made a mistake. I was wrong.  I hope the photo I saw is accurate. I hope you have the perfect little family because you will always matter to me.  There’s a part of me that that amazes but I’m honest enough to admit it.

Incidentally I do not recommend you google your ex’s.  It’s a bit like shoving your face against the glass trying to see into someone’s life uninvited. It’s a lot like jumping into the messy past and reliving things that are better left alone because there’s no future in the past.  His wife looks so ultra conservative.  If he ever googles his name and finds this entry….uh…yah I’m not PTA material.  I’m ultra liberal.  I have tattoos and piercings, I still write sappy poetry, I still listen to music for hours and read tons of books and I’m still completely EMO.  Alarming for my age…but life’s tough moments have made me this way.

If I could just say one thing to him it would be “It wasn’t you, it was me. I truly thought I wasn’t good enough for you then.  I think it was because I held such high regard for you and such mother made self disgust for myself”  And that my blog readers is the truth.  When I read that old journal last week it reimplanted in my head all the confusion and sadness and pain my family caused me.  They surely did when I had such a fantastic guy right there proposing to me and I felt not good enough to say yes.  That’s sad to me.  Especially when right now I’m likely too good for him, even if I’m not all PTA meeting type chick and stuff.

I really don’t know what my sister told you Steve about me or my life, but I can assure you that she really has limited knowledge because of our “forward email” relationship.  My family gave me the raw deal and I suppose I didn’t want to tarnish your picture perfect life…so I can only hope it is picture perfect so that the heartbreak I will always feel over you was well worth it.

Incidentally my sister said “ If you married him…you’d be divorced by now.”

I think that’s indicative of the fact that she still thinks I’m not good enough.  Yah, my family…they largely suck today just like they always have.  Some things never change.