The truth is there are many years that when you look back on your life--you just don’t remember them.  Sure, maybe you did something special that year, like the years Robyn and I went on our multi-state vacation or the year I finally got my Bachelor’s degree.  But those are events.  I don’t recall them because of the year, and chances are that as I get older it may take me a while to remember exactly what year they occurred in...if I remember at all. 

If I remember a year it’s because of something monumental.  Sometimes it’s good (births of my daughters), but more often it’s because of something bad (1992 and my Summer of Hell; 2007, when we lost Dane).  I definitely know that 2011 is one of those years I will remember, but I can’t say honestly if I will look back at it as a bad year.  It certainly has a lot in common with my Summer of Hell year (wife leaving me, financial trouble, poor decisions--I didn’t have the week in the hospital I had then, but I did get a divorce out of the way).  But in 1992 I was devastated (I was also young and did not realize then that my wife leaving me was a very good thing).  This year, devastation lasted maybe a week.  It was a long time coming, and I just wasn’t the person who finally made it happen--I would thank her for it if she hadn’t done it in the worst way possible.

I don’t know if my poor decision making this year was as bad as it was in 1992.  Then, I agreed to go out with a friend of my sister, a decision I almost instantly regretted, but something which I was not able to extricate myself from for months (I have never been one who has been able to end things).  My experience with her should have warned me never to date a friend of my sister, but it took one more try for that to sink in.  I started to date somebody about six weeks after my ex left--we just had a timing issue, though, and never were really able to get together, which was okay, as I realized I just wasn’t ready for a relationship at the time.  That started a little two-month phase in which I apparently earned the title of manwhore.  I don’t think it was warranted, and I certainly don’t think it could be used for somebody to alleviate their guilt of earlier actions, but it was what it was.  I needed to go through that to realize that it wasn’t me and what I really wanted...and what I really deserved.  Once I married somebody before we really were ready for it (although her life after proved she was never ready for being a parent), and once I married a person for who she could be rather than who she actually was, and she never became that person she could be. 

So 2011 is the year my second marriage ended.  It’s also hopefully the year I found a true love, somebody who I am in love with for who she is now, rather than what I think she could be.  I have good feelings about it, and I hope I’m not writing something next year about how she dumped me, thinking I’m a huge douchebag.

I don’t do good with resolutions (looking at last years, I think I need to read about 30 books by tonight to reach my goal), but I will write something tomorrow about goals for next year.

I’ve said “I love you” to three women in a romantic sense.  To some, that might seem too many.  To others, too few.  I’m not sure of that myself, but I know I meant it when I said it to each of them (at least I meant it at some point in our relationships--there were times during the tail end of two of the relationships when the statement was more of a reflex, like flinching when you peripherally see something coming at your head).

Two of the relationships resulted in marriage.  And divorce.  Just because there is something about that other person that inspires love doesn’t mean there is enough to keep it.  The other relationship ended because real life sucks.  If I was twenty years younger I probably would have not allowed distance and responsibility prevent me from going to her.  But I’m not...so love was conquered by a thousand miles, parenthood, jobs, and the overall suckiness of being an adult.

I’ve been thinking about love recently.  And every time I do, the same image pops into my head.  Not an image, really.  More of a short piece of footage.  In it, our hero (that would be me) is walking.  It is night.  There is a light breeze caught between summer and autumn.  Streetlights flicker on Greenwood Avenue as stars struggle to be seen.  There is a graveyard I walk by--sometimes it is to my left, sometimes to my right.  It is a path I had walked many times in my life (although not in more than 22 years).  That is what I walked on and off for about two years either to or from seeing the girl who would be the first woman to whom I declared my love.  When we first met we didn’t like each other.  Then we did.  Then I loved her.  She did not love me.  I cannot say even now whether she came to love me or whether I just overwhelmed her into submission.  She was not a woman I should have loved.  I see that now.  I saw it nine years ago when I thought that time might make better people of us all, and we dated long distance for roughly sixteen months (which in real time equaled, what, a month or two?).

So why does my mind keep coming back to that film strip of that kid walking past the graveyard?  Because that kid was sure.  Yeah, that kid was wrong, but he was so sure.  He had no doubts about his love.  About what his love could do.  It was worth the bloody fists against the wall.  The nights sighing on the roof.  The knowing eyerolls of his friends.  And the damnedest thing of all is that if I could go back I don’t know if I would tell that kid he is about to make a big mistake.  Or if I would just let him enjoy that moment.  And be jealous that he still has it.