Let me start of by saying I want to get married to this man and we have discussed married. I know he is going to propose sometime soon (he's bought a ring, he tried to hide it, but I figured it out).
Let's call him S.
S and I met when we were 14. We both come from a small town in Appalachia, where everything was stereotypically "white trash." Whatever images that those words conjure up, we probably had those experiences. My mom and his dad were opioid addicts. Our other parents were narcissistic and abusive. Both of us had a crappy childhood. We were basically dirt poor. We went to church probably around 3 times a week. There is a lot of shit here that I am not putting in, but you can get the general gist. We got together in our senior year, and when we graduated we were VERY lucky to get full ride scholarships to decent universities, not Ivy League, but it did give us an education. We spent our undergrad years going to therapy, supporting each other, trying to get good grades, etc. When we graduated, we both worked for a couple of years before applying to grad schools. We got into different grad schools.
We thought we couldn't do LDR, so we broke up. We stayed no contact with one another for like a month before we started talking again. On paper we were still "just friends." In reality, the amount of time and the way we talked was similar to what people in relationships would do. He even came to visit a few times, and we had sex. Still we were "just friends." After he graduated (and I was in my last year), he came back to where I was staying for a job and we both faced the reality that we were still in a relationship somewhat, so we needed to either acknowledge what we were doing was far beyond friendship or just cut it off. We both obviously chose to be in a relationship. It has been two years since that happened.
Now, that we are planning to get married I am scared. In the last 10 years, we have worked hard to get to where we are now. The apartment we live in is nicer than anything we lived in our childhood. We have somewhat fulfilling careers. We're planning on maybe getting a house in a year or so. Connected to this material prosperity is the fact that we are physically in shape and healthy. But sometimes I look at what we have managed to built and feel anxious that we might manage to lose it. Other times I feel guilt at thinking on the fact that many members of my family are still facing situations where they have not managed to escape the poverty we dealt with. I ask myself the question of "Who am I to deserve all of this?." This should be one of the most happiest times of my life but I am feeling extremely nervous and anxious.
S doesn't seem to understand these feelings of anxiety and negativity. Historically, he has always been the more optimistic and somewhat stoic one of us. No matter the bad news, his thinking is we can get through this. He is relentlessly positive when it comes to things, not to the point of foolishness, but still he is one of the most positive people I have known. Seeing him so positive kind of makes me even more insecure. I always wonder how can he be so positive, when by some measures, he had a worse childhood than I did (and mine was pretty bad).
TL;DR BF and I have been together since senior year of high school. Both of us had crappy childhoods in small town in Appalachia where every stereotype you can think of is probably true. We were poor. Relatives were opioid addicts, abusive, neglectful, religious to the point of being sexist etc. We were lucky that we managed to escape, and we are doing well. Now BF is about to propose and I am feeling extremely anxious and nervous about possibility of losing everything we built. So it making me nervous to get married.
Submitted May 06, 2019 at 10:54AM by NovelKiwi http://bit.ly/2vELmnZ
No comments:
Post a Comment