Saturday, October 11, 2003

Do You Mind My Asking How Your Wife Is Doing? Day!

I'm forty three now, married, a father. Still strange to be saying it. Strange for it to be true for all these years already (five). I guess I'm sort of finishing up things, yes. For so much of my youth, I was clawing into myself, trying to dig out from under the hair and the layers and layers of skin that one thing that will make me golden. There was a greatness inside me, there still is, and I drove myself mad trying to root it out. But it was a squiggly little fucker, slippery and sly, it knew just when to feint my lunge. One day, in my late thirties, I concluded that my hunt for that greatness was its only sustenance, the only thing that kept it alive. So I stopped looking for it and let it die.

Anyway, you know about me and your wife. A year and half we had around 13 years ago. Well, I loved her. And I kept loving her. But unless I became the man I wanted to be, I knew I could never have her. I could not present myself as I was, as I am, a man less than a fraction of who he'd hoped to be, I could not give this man to her. It would have been an insult. But while I was searching for that better man inside of me, I held out hope that one day I would feel that I deserved to take her by the hand.

That day never came and it never will, I've decided. And when I made that decision, with it came acceptance of the fact that your wife will be the only woman I will ever truly love until the day that I die. Yes, I am married, and I am married to a beautiful woman who has given me beautiful children. I repeat, your wife will be the only woman I will ever truly love until the day that I die. Which is why I hope you don't mind my asking you presently, how is she?

Happy Do You Mind My Asking How Your Wife Is Doing? Day!