It's Therapeutic

“I don’t ever want to have kids.”

       “Stephen, don’t say that.  You might change your mind someday.”

       “I’ve known this for quite some time.  I made up my mind when I was a freshman in high school, I’m three years shy of thirty.   I don’t want to have kids.”

       “Stephen…you might change your mind someday.”

       I met Melissa in February of 2013.  It only took three dates for both of us to know that we clicked.   I had never met anyone like her before.  I had met a lot of very pretty, very fun girls in my life and I’ve even met some since, but I’ve never met one who liked me just as much as I liked her.

       I’d never known what love was before I met her, and truth is I never should have with her either.    There was already a big red flag with her being largely into religion and me not being religious at all.   Yet, we both looked past that because we cared much more about one another than we did about how the other spent their Sunday mornings.    

       “I want to know you at least two years before we even bring up the topic of marriage and I don’t want to have kids right now, but I might change my mind someday.”

       I don’t know whether to regret saying that or not.   A part of me regrets it a lot.   A part of me doesn’t.

       Melissa loved me, cared about me, was loyal to me and good to me and allowed me to love her, care about her, be loyal and good to her back for 10 months.    No other woman has ever done that before.   It’s never happened before.   I wanted to know what being in love was like, and I got to know.    I may never get to again, but at least I got to know what it was like once.    That’s a lot more than some people will ever know.   I’d be lying if I said it didn’t anger me something fierce to know that the only reason I got to experience love was for the wrong reasons.   

       I sit up at night sometimes, unable to sleep thinking about our cats Reverend Black, Chester and Charlie sick to my stomach knowing that not only will I never see them again, but I’ll never know if they’re taken care of and loved either.   I can only hope that they’re with someone who loves and takes care of them the same way I do Peanut, but I don’t know.    I get thoughts in my head that they’re being neglected and even abused and overwhelm myself with guilt.   Having to remind myself again and again that I didn’t know what their fate would be, is something I fight nearly on a daily basis.   

       Melissa came up to me in late January of 2013, after we’d been dating for 9 months and said she needed to know one way or the other if we were going to get married or not.   I had a long hard thought about it.   I was upset that she couldn’t at least wait another 15 months, as I felt it takes at least two years to really get to know someone, but I decided that my answer to her would be based on her answer to me on the question I had for her.    Seeing the bitter divorce that my mom and dad went through, and all of the other divorces that I’ve seen people endure, marriage outright scares me to death.   It terrifies me the same way that snakes or heights terrifies other people.    Yet, I think I would have let trust overcome my fear if her answer had been different.

I used to feel very angry at Melissa for thinking that I’d change my mind about having kids someday, but I realize that it was my own fault for not saying what I should have said.    I told her that, “I don’t want to have kids, but I might change my mind someday” based on how others coaxed me into putting it that way rather than saying bluntly, “I do not ever want to have kids.”

“I want to have kids, as bad as you want to be a published author.”

That’s when I knew that I had to end things with Melissa.    At first I fooled myself into thinking that maybe I might want to have kids after I’ve tasted my first real success as a writer, but then I realized that whether I never write a professionally published book in my life or I end up writing 100s of them, it doesn’t matter.    I don’t want to have kids.   

As much as I hurt sometimes at night, thinking about her and about the cats, I sometimes find myself selfishly wishing I had lied to her.    I sometimes find myself saying that if I had to do it all over again, I would have told her that someday we’ll have kids and held on to her as long as I could have.    She’d still be here and so would Chester, Reverend Black and Charlie.       I’m sure she would have figured out eventually that I was just stringing her along and I had no real intentions of having kids.   Maybe she would have ended up lying to me and gotten herself pregnant.   Maybe things would have ended up much worse.   Matter of fact, I know they would have.

Still doesn’t make it easier to deal with though, even though it should.    Melissa wants the simple life.   She wants to be in Iowa till the day she dies, a simple woman, a wife and a mother with a simple man.   There’s nothing wrong with that at all, other than it isn’t me.    I want an adventurous life, full of spontaneous travel and excitement.   A life of hopefully one day doing all of the things in life I dream about daily and nightly now.    Nothing wrong with that, other than that wasn’t her.    

I wanted Melissa to be happy.   I knew that I couldn’t make her happy, not in the long run, not if the simple life of having a family and never knowing what’s west of the Missouri or east of the Mississippi.   If what’s going to make her happiest in life is having kids, then the right thing for me to do was to let her go and hope that she found someone who wanted the same life that she did.

I regret how it went down.    When I realized that it was over between us and there was nothing I could do to save our relationship because she couldn’t make me want kids as badly as she wanted to and I couldn’t make her stop wanting kids as badly as I wanted to, I got extremely angry.    I got so angry  that when Melissa got into a car accident,  I didn’t hug her or tell her how happy I was that she didn’t get hurt and that she was ok.    I hurt so bad inside and felt so angry at the world for our relationship coming to an end that I couldn’t.   I think that hurt Melissa the most and as angry and confused as I am about why she and her new boyfriend Shane intentionally decided to hurt me as viscously as they did with the cats, I think that might have had something to do with it.     You can’t change the past and I do think I did the right thing.   No, I know I did the right thing.   I just wish I would have done it differently.   I wish I would have sat her down, looked her in the eye, let her know that I love her and made it clear to her that I was breaking up with her because I loved her and I wanted her to be happy.   

I guess I’m always going to be upset about what happened with Chester, Charlie and Reverend Black and I don’t know if I’ll ever fully get over that.    I loved those cats very, very much and to be quite honest I still do.    Yet, if it wasn’t for that,  Melissa was nothing but good to me.   I’m 30 in 21 days and she is the only girl to ever think I was worth loving that I felt the same way about.  

I’ve tried moving on and think I’ve come close a time or two.   Mostly been a lot of really horrible experiences, like the literally 100’s that I had before I met Melissa.   Took a girl out a couple of times that murdered another girl when she was 15 and spent time in juvenile hall.   Took out another girl who I found out later was actually married and her husband was overseas in the military during the time we were dating.   Stuff that just makes you never want to date again, but they weren’t all bad.  

There was Kellie, who had a striking resemblance to  Hilary Swank  and there was also Laura Tanner, who I clicked with extremely well.    I think Laura and I would probably be together if I had made the same mistake that I had with Melissa.     I didn’t tell Laura that, “I don’t want kids right now, but I might change my mind someday” though.  I straight up told her, “Hey look, if you want to have kids, then we ought to end this right now, because I don’t and I don’t think I’ll ever want to.”    Much to Laura’s credit, she didn’t try and play the, “I’ll try and change your mind” game.   

After Laura, I’ve just not had any interest in it at all.    I even not all the long ago turned down a date with a really beautiful woman who had interest in me, because I just don’t feel like it at the moment.     I’ve never done that before.    I’m sure a day will come when I gain interest in dating and being in a relationship again.  Even if my heart and my mind are never into it again, my hormones will eventually take over.      I think it’ll be a while though.     I think it’ll be a long while.