Don't You Love Fiction?

I was watching Grey's Anatomy on ABC online. It's one of my favorite weekend indulgences. I catch up on a weeks's worth of television online because I'm too cheap to pay the cable company. The child has a friend over so she's at home, but not bothering me. Yea! So, I'm watching Grey's Anatomy. It's kind of an obsession. They are all so marred. Like me. And although technically, it's supposed to be a medical drama, it's actually about the many mix-matched loves of the staff. So, I'm watching, and the big question is: how real is love? And, it starts me to thinking about love and me.

I have concluded that although I have loved, and do love, and probably always will love, there's something wrong with me. I can't remember, but maybe I require so little from love because someone told me I didn't deserve more. I don't remember that happening, but maybe it did. I was recently told that I don't ask for much from men with whom I'm involved. I was kind of insulted, but I really don't. I don't like to set myself up for unhappiness or rejection so I minimize the potential for hurt by not asking for a lot. I take what's offered, and fill in any blanks with someone else. But the reality is that as I grow older, I have less and less interest in meeting new people. And I do want someone to really love me. There is someone who I believe loves me in the purest sense, but he has made a commitment to someone else and they have their own life. Whether or not he loves me more isn't the issue. The fact is, he isn't available to fill in all of my blanks.

And now he's getting ready to go away. That makes me sick to think about. The last time he left like this I broke out in hives and the doctor put me on Prozac. And that was before we were ... Now, although I try to be realistic about this, the fact is I'm not handling this well already, and he's still months away from leaving. Last time he came back different. Not different good, but different crazy. And it took years to get him somewhat back. He came back on a mission, determined to be a husband and father, and do it all better than his own. And he was going to do it regardless of what anyone else thought or what changes he had to go through. And he has. But in the process, he had to be someone else, and it seems as though he is just now coming out of that fog. And here we go again. When he comes back this time, and it may be 2 yrs., I think I'm going to have to say what I've avoided saying for the past 16 yrs. I'll have plenty of time to think about it, and who knows, maybe something will happen in my life that will change the way I feel. What makes reality different from fiction is that it doesn't always work out.