How's your love story go?

Have you ever imagined telling your kids about your love story, some day when you're old and gray? You can tell them *just* the part about what it was like to meet the person you chose to spend your life with, or you can tell them the FULL story...there's always a full story, isn't there?
I was thinking about my story today. After i thought about what, if anything, I'd do differently...because, afterall...I graduated highschool, went to cosmetology school, met Cullen, moved in, got married all by 20. Started having babies at 25, not having done a whole lot other than buy a house and enjoy my husband until then (meaning we didn't go see the world or anything like that). Kept having babies, starting working from home, and hello, friends, you're all caught up. But I can't find a part that I'd change, somehow. Anyways.
I was thinking about the *other* boy that I loved. Now, looking back, perhaps he's the only other boy I've ever loved truly. Stupid, mean boyfriends...that wasn't love. One timers were certainly not love. Yes, I think that the other boy was the only other person I loved unconditionally. It probably isn't appropriate for me to even be talking about this, is it? But I'm not known for appropriateness, and in the end, this is an important part of MY story. Cullen would hate reading it, although he shouldn't- he won. I picked him. And I'd pick him again. I keep picking him, even when I want to be kicking him. : )
We'll call the other Jacob.
My friend lived down the street from us, she moved in when I was 8 or so. I knew her well enough to be at her house all the time when Jacob's name first came up. He was her cousin, and as soon as she knew he was coming over, she set it up. "You have to meet him! You're the same age!" I don't know what it was about me, or about that day, but I loved him from then on. Never having met him. I'm kinda like that. I fell HARD, too. She's the only one how knows how hard, and that's because she had to deal with me blushing, stammering, crying, and carrying on over him all those years.
I met him. And, I still loved him.
I saw him almost never. But seeing him was EVERYTHING. He slept in the green sleeping bag at her house when he'd (we'd) stay over. I slept in it when he wasn't staying over. IN LOVE. Couldn't think when he'd look at me, couldn't talk when he spoke to me. It was that bad, and that obvious.
We talked on the phone when we got older. We were always dating people. I'd ask, he'd ask...I actually think that we talked alot on the phone. When we could drive we'd hang out now and then. No matter what was going on, I just knew that I'd end up with him someday. I just knew he'd marry me. I'd add up the evidence: he's on my birth announcement in the paper even though he was born 2 months earlier, I recognized him immediately when I met him from...where? I don't know...and there were a million other little coincidences that to me shouted:HELLO! MEANT TO BE TOGETHER!! In fact, during a quite abusive relationship, I was being yelled at by the abuser who was shouting "You are a nasty, worthless piece of shit and no one besides me will ever love you." and I immediately thought of Jacob and of how wrong, wrong, wrong this misled person was. I WOULD be loved properly. I WAS worth it.
I cried often, tortured and missing Jacob, and wanting him to want to be my boyfriend. I'm not sure we ever talked about it though. All those years, and I'm not too sure we talked about it. I know that I didn't feel like I'd measure up, sometimes, to the girls I imagined him being with. And I felt like I wouldn't be able to keep his attention....we were so young. He was so cute, and I was so not his normal type (I thought, anyways). How could he not want to try out all the pretty girls? And yet, nightly, we talked.
In the meantime my eating disorder was kicking my ass...I was a size 1 (which is just unnatural for me and I'm sad I still remember how happy I was to fit into that size...just a FEW more pounds to lose and I'd start being pretty ...). At some point, I realized that my darling friend probably wasn't going to come rescue me afterall. I didn't feel loved or cared about by him, I surely hated me and just when I honestly stopped giving a crap about anything at all....Jacinta called and told me I had to meet Cullen.
She said he was the male Nicki- HA! HAHAHAHAH! He's my opposite in as many ways as we're alike. But, since I totally did not give a rats ass at all, I said i didn't care, and she set it up for the next night.
I instantly- INSTANTLY liked him. This was a different feeling than when I'd first met Jake. This was...just different. I felt like we were on an open road, no obstacles, like he was a beacon of light, a breath of fresh air, freedom. We hit it off immediately, and from go we were just...together, all the time. I had so much fun with him and he was the first boy that I liked THAT WAY that I could be myself with. And I was. I could talk around him. I could talk to him! I made sure he knew right from go that I'm not "normal". I was scared to death to tell him about my eating disorder or how bad it was and how the time would be soon that I'd have to fix it or die because I couldn't go on how I was going on. I tried to scare him with my silly antics. He just wasn't scared.
He stuck with me. He went through treatment with me, he held me for hours upon hours while I cried about having to eat, or having just eaten. He LOVED ME. I simply loved him. The stories I'd written, the things that the boys always said in my stories, he said. He said them, and he meant them and he made my heart sing, and he was so much fun to be around. He made me laugh. I trusted him, and for the first time, I felt SAFE! It was heavenly.
After a couple of months, Jacob realized...or else I told him, can't remember...that I was getting serious. Oh, maybe it got to him through my friend. I don't know. But I do know that all of the sudden, Jake wanted to stake his claim. I probably shouldn't put it that way. He was scared. He was scared that I was actually going to get married and that we weren't going to end up together. MY GOD...I was only 19 years old when Cullen and I decided to get married......that is so young now, looking back. Poor Jake.
Poor ME. I cannot properly convey to you what that time was like. The boy I'd been in love with since what felt like the beginning of time was here, right here, asking me not to get married to Cullen. He had nothing to apologize for, I see that now, I see how young I was. He SHOULD have been out dating. He SHOULD have not had to worry about me getting MARRIED at nineteen. But that's what I was doing. Then I got a little mad at him for taking so long. What the hell took him so long? Where was he all this time? A decade of adoring someone that much when you're that young..well, it COUNTS! I got mad. Trying to make this horribly hard decision hurt me so deeply. How do you choose between the one that makes time stop, the one you always thought you'd be with, The one you've dreamed about for so long that no one else mattered ever, a part of a family you've known since you were 8, but are nervous that the timing is wrong and that he'll accidentally hurt you in a way that you couldn't recover from...and the one who makes you feel calm, loved, cared about...makes you laugh, kisses your head off, hears you, trusts you with his heart, has the family that you fit right into? The one who met you and wanted you from the beginning? How does a girl choose?
I felt sick letting Jacob go. I didn't know if I'd ever fully recover from it. Sounds silly, probably. But when I tried imagining walking away from Cullen, I just couldn't. I thought to myself that if Jacob could pick anyone out for me, he himself would have picked Cullen. If I was going to be a brat that way, and run off and get married when I was still wet behind the ears, and he couldn't be the one, well, he'd pick Cullen. I can almost see him rolling his eyes.
I'm sorry to have hurt him back then. Even if it was only fair after all the tears I'd cried, it didn't feel good to imagine what he was feeling.
I got married to my prince who loved to spoil me rotten (so much for teaching me to take "no" a little better!). My prince who grew with me as we stumbled through eating disorders and learning disabilities (my baby, who was once too scared to write a check in front of anyone, can now bounce them like a PRO!), buying houses, and fights with friends who weren't married yet...to miscarriages, pregnancies, job changes, money issues....boy we've grown up together. We are among the lucky ones...when we're in the middle of the saddest times we've had, our hearts are like magnets and we are drawn together instead of repelled. That's very lucky. We've weathered some stressful situations and to be pulled together instead of turning away ...lucky indeed! He's like a gift I get to keep on opening.
He IS a man, however...he has the ability to be a jackhole and he sometimes is, without even meaning to be. But that's living with another human being, isn't it. We're all pretty much jackholes at some point. We're all the same, in the end, prettymuch, basically. HA! Enough generalizations for you?
Do you think there is only one right person? I'm sure there are many who things would "work out" fine with. For both of us. For all of us. I'd thought there was only one right person out there growing up as a young girl, and i was shown that I was wrong. Different puzzle pieces sometimes still fit together.
Well, from the outside, I have had a pretty typical, boring, small townish girl life. But someday, I might get to tell this fabulous love story to my daughter or granddaughter, when I'm old, and wrinkley and time has turned my hair gray, and my mind forgetful. I can tell her all about how a girl has to follow her heart, even when it takes her places she wasn't planning on going.