For the last few days I have been dealing with some old memories that recently surfaced when I awoke. I felt depressed and since that is a good sign that I need to journal I did. Oh, it was like peeling back a layer of me and finding a wound that had never healed. I just covered it up and tried to forget it although it has been slipping out here and there.
It involves a job that I had when I was a teenager in which I helped take care of a single man's mother while I was going to college. He lived elsewhere. He was a college professor and had an active social life. I was very innocent in those days. For being around and making sure his mother had everything, I got a place to live and a small allowance. It freed me from getting a job that would take hours away from my schoolwork.
It lasted only a year but it affected me in ways I did not want to remember. I never tried an arrangement like that again. My best friend died during that time. I developed deep feelings for the professor that never went away. The mother ended up going back East, but I never forgot that time which seemed magical in many ways. It was the only time that I went to college and did not have to work at a regular job. It seemed wonderful.
That year ended a time of my youth and started one of my adulthood. I think I had a vision of my life having happier endings because I had a dysfunctional childhood. I nestled in a storyline that had at best an adulthood that life would be better when I reached it. It became apparent that it was not to be. That year was an introduction into reality. I fell in love with someone who did not love me back.
What was ironic was the professor had graduated from a university and was posed to take a job teaching at an university and to marry a woman he loved very much but she married someone else. He became very ill and almost died. He lost tremendous amount of weight and almost died. His mother came out to nurse him and then he found out later his mother was losing her sight. He took the job of teaching and then began to take care of her as her only other relative, his brother, refused to do it as he had a large growing family to care for back East.
Maybe, she was not going back East, but he had fired me. I don't know. I was depressed myself after the death of my friend. Maybe, his mother wanted an older woman and not a student. I got a job and continued to go to school and found an apartment. I went on with my life and he continued to teach at the state university until he retired. I saw him only once and he pretended not to see me. That hurt my feelings.
My feelings, as I said, never changed. I still think of him. In my mind, he is still in his early 30's. I looked him up as one can do on the Internet and he lives in Hawaii. He is in his 80's. I can't imagine his being that old. My life went on as everyone does in the same situation. It was nothing odd or strange. I fell in love several times after that but nothing ever was like that first time. It should have not been so important to me, but it was. Maybe, it was the timing of it all and the reality that life was not going to be the wonderful golden time I dreamed it would be. I thought I would find the fairy tale that it was promised by the movies and the stories I had read. It wasn't. He was not a bad man and certainly was not cruel or abusive. That I am very grateful for. I fell in love with abusive men later. It was easy to fall out of love with them. He was a kind and gentle man who almost died from love himself.
It is funny how life turns out the way it does. I remember all of the stories his mother told about her oldest son. I know he did not like children and he insisted that all of his girlfriends know he did not want to marry especially if it meant marrying someone who had kids. Most of his girlfriends were divorced women and he was chased by women all of the time and I know that because when I worked there I was always being asked by women who knew his mother who her son was dating. They were also wondering if he was dating me. He never threw a pass at me. I wasn't his type. I was always going with her to visit women her age who had unmarried daughters who wanted to know this information. He was a very good looking man.
I ended up marrying an abusive man. I had several children by him and those children were well worth having in my mind and of course the grandchildren. In those early years, I was very ill and did not know it. It was the birth of my first child that created conditions that brought out the cancer that would not have been detected had I not been pregnant. In fact, many of the doctors I saw during the pregnancy thought my illness was in my head. Thank goodness, I saw an expert that happened to be at the Veterans Hospital one particular day. I would have died otherwise. I have told my son that his birth saved my life.
I went on and had a great life after the professor. I have no idea what kind of life he had as I never really saw him except that one time he ignored me. I went on and became much happier than I was during that year that I worked for him. I am sure his mother is gone now. I have been writing about the fact that if for some reason he fell in love with me as he had with that woman who left him at the altar I would not be alive today for I would never have had my son who saved my life. I would never have the other child and grandchildren and all of the other experiences I had since then. I would have had other experiences and an early death and a place in some cemetery. Still, I can still see him in my mind's eye as he looked so many years ago. The ache I felt in my heart is still there. He is as old or even older than his mother was then. He was so handsome and I guess he will always be to me as women's prince charmings are.
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