It has taken me two weeks to feel half-decently comfortable in my own skin to stay at home and start this Blog. I thought about creating one before my husband left so that I might find some interaction (with healthy minds) to help me put matters in perspective. I guess I'll have to go back and add some details if any of this is to make sense to anyone. I'm a first time blogger, so expect some wandering thoughts that lead to nowhere...I'm still processing...
My perception (up to mid-Sept. last year) of my husband and our relationship was that I counted myself a pretty lucky woman. I loved my husband dearly and anytime I thought about our relationship, I thought it pretty amazing. I saw our love as having reached this peacefulness and contentment that only people who really accepted each other and were truly in love over many years could reach. Sadly, I think that was where only I had reached.
My husband (we'll call him Mark) was a consistently quiet, gentle man. To be sure, he is an introvert who mixes well with those he's familiar. Although quiet in a social setting, he listens and observes everything but small-talk is not something he knows, or cares, to engage in. He is highly intelligent and can pierce through any argument with the soundest of arguments, writes incredibly well, and speaks eloquently in front of a crowd when work called him to do so. He would rarely raise his voice unless a topic, to which he was particularly sensitive to or passionate about, would raise his ire. Then, he'd break out in a caustic attack that would raise anyone's eyebrow (moreso, perhaps, because one never hears him raise his voice). Mark was also a mountaineer who usually went solo into the backcountry at least once a year. By backcountry, I mean, finding a glacier somewhere. He loves ice and snow. This wasn't a sport but something spiritual. Going on these sojourns was his way of reconnecting with Nature and grounding himself. There was a pureness in his need to reconnect with the natural environment.
Who am I? I am this half extrovert-half introvert who can socialize if need be but prefers to do things one-on-one or in small groups. I enjoy intellectual challenges and am satisfied with my level of intelligence though my memory isn't the greatest. I am a good writer and am artistic (visually-creative) but didn't keep it up over many years (until recently). I was always quite independent and enjoyed my solitude. In fact, I used to find it curious that I was alone but not lonely. I had one serious relationship throughout my undergraduate years then a bunch of silly affairs with married men (as the song goes "I was looking for love in all the wrong places") before finding Mark. When we met I was physically fit and had kept up my interest in jogging and exercising which I'd had since my adolescent years. I have always loved the mountains and had hiked extensively in the Rockies when I was younger. My love of Nature matched his very well. We each had a library of books and when we amalgamated, there were many duplicates among them.
Mark and I met in graduate school almost 18 years ago and we had the same supervisor. He said that when I first introduced myself to him, he knew he was going to be with me. I just thought he was cute, but afterwards, found his silence to be unfriendly (he often didn't acknowledge someone unless they acknowledged him first). In my 2nd year, we taught together: he taught the course while I was his teaching assistant who ran the labs. He was the highly intellectual academic while I was coming from years of more applied experience. Our energies were a great match. We had a similar work ethic, loved so many of the same things and he loved my animated personality while I loved his quiet gentleness. We got together after two years of teaching together, lived together for a year, then got married.
We both had no desire to have children but had two dogs that really completed our family. They were both around 6 yrs. old when I came into their "dad's" life and they lived to be 13 and 15 years old (our years). For a long while after we lost the last dog, our life became rather empty and it was hard to fill that void. We had moved by that time and the place where we lived didn't allow pets and for a long time Mark said he couldn't really think about having another dog. He wasn't even able to talk about our last dog because even the mention of her name brought him deep sorrow. Even years after her passing, any conversation about her affected him deeply.
I'm tired of writing now, so will continue later...
