double love

well here it is...the honesty that is too painful to share anywhere else.

i am in love with two men.

shocked?

well...the same body houses them both...so don't worry...its not too scandalous.

when i met joel i never could have pictured a more perfect love...honestly.

we never fought. we longed for each other... we could make the world disappear as we laid in bed talking about our lives, past, present, and occasionally...future...

he was the perfect boyfriend...

he surprised me. he needed me.. he never let me feel less than the most important thing in his life.

i had never fallen in love.

i thought i had once before...when i was much younger.

too young.

joel became the man i had daydreamed about meeting and while everything was perfect...almost movie like...

we both wondered how the hell it could play out.

he was after all going to be deploying for a year.

life felt so beautifully cruel.

but we were young, in love, and had nothing to worry about other than him coming home safe.

that was when life threw us this incredible curve ball.

a positive test. i was pregnant.

i melted in the hallway outside of the pantry in trying to tell amanda as she was doing laundry what i had just discovered.

having been exactly in my shoes...i think a deep peaceful knowing it would all be okay vibe came off her as she showed sympathy in holding me as i bawled and said terrible things about how this could never work...what was i going to do...i couldn't be pregnant....and worst of all...i didn't want this...

lizzie came downstairs and when amanda told her what was going on the look on her face sealed it in my heart that this news was devastating...

i didn't know how to tell joel.

no idea what his reaction was going to be.

i called...texted...or amanda did...i think i was still in too much shock to work something like a phone.

no answer.

she called loren. told him to find joel.

he did and joel called me....confessing later that he thought...either kaia died...or i was pregnant. he knew me well...those two things would have brought out the same frantic reaction.

i told him...not in any pretty way...our movie-like lives and romance when out the door with my awkward phrasing of his new found father hood.

joel remained calm. almost no reaction. promised he would be down.

i tried to get out of work...couldn't.

went in and waited for joel to get downtown.

we met at mulligans...

he held me.

neither of us knew what to do/say/feel.

so we just existed together.

being with him brought me peace.

i knew he loved me...i knew i loved him...and suddenly i could breath again.

during those days...we agreed not to decide anything....

we planned a camping trip...three or four days of driving around with no destination...we would figure it out then.

joel did shock me one night as we lay on my bed...he said if we did keep it...we should get married.

it came out simple and without any sign of an internal struggle...

here this man had said he would marry me...

we had only known each other for a short short few months...

and yet...i knew he was the one...and somehow i wanted to believe that the same thing was what brought him to that conclusion...

he then said...he knew he would marry me eventually...so why not...

we agreed again...wait for the trip.

as days went by i knew more and more in my heart that my only choice was to keep the baby. everyday i lived knowing that life was within me.

a life placed there by the only love i had ever known.

i thought about it....my child.

conceived with the man i knew now that i loved as i hadn't before...

i felt i had to make a choice for joel in making a choice for myself...

so we go on our trip to nowhere special...we spent cold night wrapped up in each other and warm days exploring the worlds we found...and finally...resolved to get it out...we went on a walk that laid out our fate.

i remember the spot. the feeling....the way his hand felt in mine.

i told him i was keeping it...that i couldn't choose any other way.

i told him he could walk away. that i would never hate him, blame him, haunt him...he nearly laughed at me.

in a peaceful sort of sigh we knew we had a long road ahead of us...telling our families...getting married...setting up house all before he deployed to war, leaving me to have this baby without him and him to be put through a wringer...so to speak..of physical, emotional, and spiritual pain.

the stress of it all leaves my memory..though i know i lost a good deal of weight due to being sick to my stomach. but i think in hindsight...my "morning sickness" wore off the same week we got married....

the drama and stress and other terrible-ness aside...the four months of married life were the best four months of my life.

the amazing boyfriend...turned into the more amazing husband.

always loving, attentive...attuned.

i hoped i was the same for him.

he made me CDs and we made love as though it was an act of spiritual release.

there was much laughter as water fights left us drenched and smiling.

as we grew closer...so did the date of his departure...

then it happened.

a goodbye.

he was gone.

i felt empty and hallow and alone. thoroughly alone.

he was the only thing i had lived for since the first moment we kissed.

he was my best friend and lover and rock and comedic relief.

i lived a year in perpetual fear.

worry became my greatest threat.

i would worry all the time. save the precious hour we would spend online together...

the phone calls came less and less and i understood how hard they were for him...

hearing me and seeing me as characters on the screen were different.

i understood his need for some detachment.

i also thought i understood that no matter what he went through...if he came home alive...our tremendous love would heal him.

i knew nothing.

the man that returned to me was a broken man.

he had to put his pieces back together and in doing that...i started to fall apart.

i don't know how many times i have looked at him as two people...

how unfairly i have wished the man who came home to go back and find the man who i said goodbye to.

i cry at night when he is sleeping in grief for my loss.

my greatest love.

the man who left

i see him getting better...and yet...

we haven't been the same.

and when he tells me that things will never be like they once were he doesn't know the grief i feel.

the helplessness of missing him.

the emptiness it leaves me with.

i broke down in december. begging in a way for him to give me hope that the man i lost was not in fact lost...

he has been showing me glimpses of him since then.

hope is creeping back in.

but i feel like our perfect tremendous love might never feel as it once did....

yes...we are parents now...

we have both been through our own personal hells.

but i miss the way the man i loved before could make that all melt away.

i beg this man now to hold me sometimes...to feel the physical closeness of him is like pain medication for my soul. not fixing the problem...but numbing it enough to get through another day.

now i find myself once again pregnant...

and i can't help but feel like my kids will have been fathered by two different men...

my son by the first joel...the result of a carefree young love that was stronger than i could have known love to be...

and my daughter...by the second joel...the result of a careful wiser love...strengthened by shear will and determination. the result of hope.

it isn't fair to joel to see him this way. as one and the other.

i know he is the same man...

hell...I'VE been the one to tell him that he is the same person he was...that he has just been through something...

but its hard to feel like life is so different.

i do find anger in myself.

anger at life for giving me so short a time of carefree young love.

i daydream about joel and i being able to backpack across europe like we once talked of doing...

but its never the same...

we don't cling to each other as we once did...

now when life is feeling rough we don't retreat to each others arms...though i know i still need him in that way...

he in turns needs solitude.

he sees the unfairness...but i hope he knows none of it is his or anyones fault.

maybe someday we will find ourselves laughing drenched after a spontaneous water fight...and reaching out for each other the way we started...

i love two men.

housed in one body.

but i LOVE them both.

and that is all that matters.

amanda finds out what she is having

you know...something about finding out the gender of the baby paints all your pictures...

when i was pregnant with CJ every fiber of me was certain it was a boy...i never felt okay expressing that for fear of being wrong and people thinking i would be disapointed.

when i learned he was a boy suddenly my image of our family life was painted with blues and baseball and all things "boy" it wasn't that i was stoked to be having a boy...it was that i was stoked to see the picture of our lives...

then with evie...

i knew she was a girl...i called her "her" a few times...i was more willing to be open in my feelings this time knowing that no matter either way it would be perfect.

when they said "its a girl" my world suddenly was filled with dresses and pinks and all things feminine.

but also...the thought of having a daughter...to talk to about makeup and boys...to help guide in womanhood....suddenly i couldn't imagine not getting a chance at that...

so when amanda told me that she too was pregnant it seemed too perfect...

two babies...just under two months apart...

if she has a girl i have a picture in my heart painted of evie's best friend....

if its a boy...our two families...two boys and two girls...playing together and bonding within genders and ages.

CJ and theona are already fast friends...and while i think of knowing amanda for forever...CJ can say that theona knew him since LITERALLY the day he was born.

he lights up at the site of her.

he has after all only three friends who are kids...her and zach and matt...

he knows theona the best.

and when evie's new friend makes his/her appearance then i can clearly see the picture...

sometimes it feels like one big family.

i love that feeling.