Perhaps it is not wise to post such personal thoughts online. But something F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote has always stuck with me: "I like large parties. They’re so intimate. At small parties there isn’t any privacy.” And what is the internet if not the largest party ever?
I have never been happier, or sadder. I am happy because I have found someone with whom I want to spend the rest of my life. But I am also deeply saddened by my family's rejection of my choice. Why? Because of a label. They refuse to see past the wheelchair, refuse to see the caring, loving man I see. And I am caught in the middle. I cannot explain or even fully understand why I am so torn by my family. It is a combination of guilt, obligation, and love. Truth be told, I have not been happy with my family for a long while now; but somehow, they hold me as an emotional hostage and I cannot escape. All of this of course, is compounded by financial dependence on my captors. But I have made my choice. I choose to be happy.
After a lifetime of playing it safe, going with the flow, following blindly, I finally found something, someone, worth risking everything for. It's strange, only now have I realized how apathetic I was, how depressed I used to be, how empty I felt. It's as if I am finally waking up after being asleep for...most of my life. Only the dreaming world and waking world are one, and the nightmares and problems that plagued me in sleep are reaching out and strangling me as I am trying to wake up. But wake I must.
I know it won't be easy. We are already facing our first financial hurtles. I am taking on a mountain of debt with no employment, trying to graduate from college with no support system, somehow find a job that will support us after college, pay back my student loans, and build a life with what meager means we can manage to scrounge together.
Honestly, we will probably spend a decade or more struggling to make ends meet. I confess, right now I feel scared, guilty, helpless and vulnerable.... but, for once, not alone. I know that no matter how difficult the road will be, it will be worth it to be free; free to love, free to live, free to leap off a cliff...to fly or fall only time will tell. But either way, I'll be smiling.
