Kiss and Tell

Not many people know about this, but I was engaged to be engaged or engaged for real once.

I had two engagement rings. The first set were matching rings with our names on them. We bought them and had them engraved at Hershey Park. He got down on one knee and proposed. It was so sweet. His aunt took wonderful photos that I treasured for years. I wore the ring at all times to the point where even years later my skin looks weird where the ring used to sit. I have extra freckles below and above that spot. While warmed with my body heat the ring reminded me of his warm kisses, and I'd blush as it slid against my other finger, the smooth metal hot and silky. I cherished that ring more than anything.

Of course, I had no idea where this relationship was going. Nobody really took it seriously. There was an age difference, we were both very young, and it was long distance. We met in an internet chat room, how lame is that? I started wanting a more traditional relationship along with a more traditional ring, the kind with diamonds. I felt like with a diamond ring we'd be taken more seriously and be respected as a couple.

On Christmas Day while I was staring into space he snuck up and jammed a gold ring with diamonds and emeralds on my finger.

"Ouch! What in the world are you --- oh wow!"

Of course, that ring didn't solve any problems. It just deluded me into thinking I was in a serious, grown-up relationship when I clearly wasn't. I wasn't ready to move to his town. I don't think I ever intended to move there. I wasn't ready to change my life at all. Nothing felt more wrong than that ring on my finger.

In contrast, I never felt I needed a ring to prove to the world my relationship with Greg was legit. Greg has always been very open with how he felt about me and where our relationship was headed. Plus, it was nice to not have to wear anything on my hands, especially as my fingers became swollen when I got fat.

There was a time I almost felt like I needed a ring to be taken seriously. I had this friend who constantly put down my relationship with Greg because I wasn't completely happy with him at the time. Plus she had just moved really quickly in her relationship and as her relationship milestones very quickly surpassed mine, I became to get anxious and looked at rings. I was never serious, however. I still believed I never needed a piece of paper to tell me I could be with Greg, nor did I need a rock on my finger for permission to give my heart away. I also didn't need my friend's approval to love who I loved.

My friend meant absolutely no harm, though. She just wants everyone to be as happy as they can be potentially, which is one of her best qualities. She later apologized to the two of us and congratulated us on making it work.

Sometime over the last year, with a complete lack of awareness, I lost any doubt in my mind that Greg was the one. When I try to identify what changed it is difficult. Maybe I matured like everyone says. Maybe I finally learned to love. Maybe it's the way between the two of us we've lost more than 100 lbs and are happier and healthier. Maybe it's the way we work to make our crappy apartment a home, or the way we make a point to make time for each other. I just feel so secure in what we have. It feels rock solid. We can and do talk about anything under the sun. I want to spend as much as my time with him as possible.

I keep looking at engagement rings. All of a sudden I want something as sparkly and as special as what I have with Greg to rest on my finger. I don't need the ring to prove anything to anyone or myself, but for the first time when I allow myself to dream about love, weddings, and a future, it feels right. It feels like what I am doing already. It feels really in tune with not only what I want, but what I already have.

When I look at rings now, I realize I want something completely different than the rings I had with someone else. However, when I think of all of this stuff sometimes I feel terribly afraid and vulnerable. I think the hardest thing to do is trust myself after failing in my previous engagement. Those old insecurities keep chasing me that I'll make this huge commitment and it will blow up in my face like it did before and I'll be humiliated. It's so sad when I won't let myself be happy. I've been with Greg for more than eight years. I think I made my choice long ago. I should be allowed to embrace it fully.

This month has been ... interesting to say the least. Between stomach bugs, high and low blood pressure woes, car trouble, and medication changes, I'm proud that I'm standing here today. (Or laying in bed posting. Whatever.)

While I was stuck in bed, unable to go to church, school, or work, I started drafting a photo book as a lark. This isn't the finished product, but I like what I see so far.

Click here to view this photo book larger

This is my face.


This is also my face.

They are the same face, shot in the same moment in time in the same location by the same camera in the same photograph:



This is what I would look like in the mirror:



I used to feel really weird about how "uneven" my face was, however most people do not have perfect facial symmetry. If you think about it I have two very beautiful women who get to live on my face. I think I can live with that. :-)

HALLOWEEN IS NOT SCARY
I've never thought of Halloween as frightening or evil. I was always amused at how threatened Baptist churches were by it, and wondered sometimes if paranormal activity really existed or was the sole stretched imagination of people really looking for it.

Halloween for me was a theatrical thing. Put on a costume, play a part, and get candy if you remember your lines: Trick or treat. Jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, and even skeletons did not seem menacing. Their so-called wicked smiles seemed so innocent to me. Even scary movies did not phase me. Startle, yes. But frighten? No, indeed.


See? Too cute, like a tiger or a bear, and too inanimate to be menacing.

As little girl I may have been vulnerable to a variety of threats by nature of my age. Kidnapping, childhood diseases, accidents in automobiles or in the home, drowning, fire, suffocation, and pretty much anything else listed here. These never seemed like real threats to me since none of them actually happened to me personally or anyone I knew except the kidnapping and the girl escaped. It's common to feel a certain immunity to mortality as a young person. If children worried all the time about danger and dying they'd never be able to learn anything or try anything new.

MY BIGGEST FEAR
The biggest threat, which still persists today, is the fear of rejection or abandonment. These are threats experienced early and often. The sinking feeling of your parents driving away while you stare out the window of your kindergarten class. The first time a child gets in a cranky mood and tells another child, "I don't like you, go away." The first time a little boy teases a little girl he likes and says, "Haha, you're ugly!" The first time someone pushes you off of the teeter totter and screams, "MINE!"

While most intentions of children who reject in this manner are innocent and it's just a part of growing up, in a sense it's the basis for someone to learn to care what others think of them. It makes you think you have to change your behavior or looks to stop the teasing, when often the person doing the teasing is just teasing for the sake of teasing. Boredom, boundary pushing, lashing out at anyone who would have asked to play at that moment, etc.

I'm not sure people can dress up as rejection, abandonment, or a bully for Halloween, though.

My biggest fear growing up that I faced daily was rejection, abandonment, or bullying. For a long time my parents' advice was ignore them. To paraphrase Barbara Parks's novel Skinnybones it's hard to ignore someone's knee in your mouth. This is when my mother gave me truly eye-opening advice to aid survival in life if not popularity. This is because my mother is awesome.

"Not everyone in the whole world is going to like you. You're not going to like everyone in the whole world all of the time. The world does not revolve around you. In fact, most people are not going to notice or remember you because there are just too many people in the world. Therefore you may as well be yourself and not care as much what everybody thinks because you cannot completely control that."

What helped cement this in my mind was how my parents could go around always embarrassing me, wearing the clothes they wore, listening to the music they listened to, and dancing the way they danced. In public. Where all my friends could see! Obviously they did not care what anyone thought of them. While I was cringing and hiding in my seat to avoid being seen, they were be-bopping around in the car to The Rolling Stones, pointing their fingers in the air and bobbing their heads in the dorkiest way possible, laughing hysterically as I shoved down in my seat in the truck as if that would make this any less embarrassing. This is apparently a universal thing.

However, soon I realized that the cars we were passing while they were boogeying down to Aerosmith or Rod Stewart were many, going at least 55 mph, and totally not noticing or caring that my parents were enjoying the radio in this bizarre manner. Plus, if they did see us, it was only for a second because soon we were gone!



This was a very big self-esteem builder and my gauge for whether someone was cool in high school. Phony, judgmental people had no place in my life. Silly, loving, free people did.

What my parents neglected to mention is what the real world is really like. For instance, there is a time and place for being yourself. To prepare me for the real world as an adult a few years later, my father took me aside and told me to keep my mouth shut, do what I'm told, and don't fall in love too fast or I would get hurt.

I suppose that was good advice too, but it completely changed my opinion of him and the world around me. I no longer knew what to think. Was I supposed to be myself or not? It seemed like the more I kept my mouth shut, did what I was told, and guarded my heart, the lonelier and sadder I felt.

Then came the internet. What I loved about the internet as a teenager is that for the first time I felt heard. This had both negative and positive connotations. The positive part is that I had a reader base who enjoyed what I had to say, which helped me meet people I otherwise would never have met. The negative connotation is that there were some things I maybe should not say, because anybody could hear them and take them out of context. Also, I never realized how permanent the internet was. Some things, like cyber-bullying, remain permanent because at anytime you can click a link to a page where someone has been cyber-bullied in the past and all of the hurtful words are still there, directed at that person.

So imagine how hurt I was when I read the following words directed at me on a cyber bullying and snark website I refuse to link:

"Now, stop acting like the internet is your soapbox because, honey, nobody is listening. And if they are, it's just like it used to be... they're listening, but only to laugh and wait and see what kind of word vomit spills from your mouth next."

And there it was.

There was my biggest fear realized, that nobody was listening. Nobody cared what I had to say, forever. People were laughing at me, forever. People thought I was a fool or a lol-cow.

Forever. It's there forever. Always.

This wasn't some anonymous jerk who was reading this from a list of things to say when you're in a flame war and want to pwn your opponent. This was someone I knew in real life if only for a second, and then I was supposedly gone. And she "remembered" me from high school. Oddly, what she remembered wasn't true. She told everyone all kinds of weird things about me such as that I had altercations with my classmates, that people thought I was a witch, that I was obnoxious on purpose, that I spoke in a fake accent.

It didn't matter to me or the person who was bullying me that others in that thread came to my defense, or that she was just saying these things to make herself look good.

It didn't matter that these things weren't true.

It didn't matter that I was active in church in high school, that I was nice to everyone, that I had a lot of friends who loved me and love me still, or that my "fake accent" was mostly due to being deaf as a child and years of speech therapy after I regained my hearing and partly due to the fact I have a very large vocabulary.

All it mattered is that it was believable and what I feared to be true. All that mattered was the fear that people didn't like me, the fear the people thought I was weird, the fear that I left that kind of lasting impression when I thought others were too focused on themselves to care what I did, hurt me for years.

For two or three years I didn't talk to any of my friends and hid in my apartment after what this person said to me on the internet. I eventually got therapy, and I eventually got my life back. I'm slowly learning that when people say harsh things, even if there is a bit of truth behind it, it reflects more on them as a person than to who their words are directed.

It's not jack-o-lanterns, ghosts, or goblins that scare me or the rest of the world.

All anyone wants is to be loved and accepted.

Reader, what is your biggest fear?