Who is Marty?

I realize that I do have several new readers to my blog that probably haven't been through the Marty saga. I'll try to give you a fairly brief recap, but if you want the entire story you can read through the Marty blog entries. I went through today and labeled most of my posts dealing with him, but I have probably missed some here and there. To start at the beginning you'll have to scroll to the bottom and go to "older posts" and then go back through several pages as there's 127 posts and they only show 20 per page.

Here's the recap:

Marty was my high school boyfriend for a brief period of about a month. He asked me to homecoming the night before the event during my senior year. After high school we briefly hooked up again and had some make-out sessions. But soon after, I moved on to my college life and he joined the coast guard and left town. Over the next 14 years we were in touch a couple of times. In January of 2004, however, he contacted me through classmates.com. At that time I was separated from my husband and was filing for divorce. He had just been divorced for about 6 months. So since he was single and I was basically single, we started conversing quite a bit and struck up an interest in each other.

He came to visit me in February of 2004 and we had some fun together (if you know what I mean). He stayed a little over a week (I think) and then returned to Connecticut where he was stationed for the Coast Guard. I enjoyed the time with him, but I wasn't set on dating him at that point. I had some concerns and some other interests including a band director in Michigan. Eventually I decided to try to find a local love interest and ended up dating Patrick. He is the one that got me started with blogging. Patrick was a very nice guy but it never really clicked for me with him.

Marty came back to visit in July of 2004. At that time something happened. A spark so to speak and by the time he left I started to fall for him. He had started falling for me during his first visit, but I held out for a while. But when he had to leave to go back home, it hurt and I knew that was it for me. We decided to give a relationship a try despite my best efforts to fight it for a while. I let go of the other guys that I was seeing to some degree and focused on Marty.

It started out wonderfully. The long-distance sucked, but with IM and free long distance on my phone, we managed pretty well. Marty was back in August to visit his parents in Austin and I went down and stayed with him/them. That is when I started falling very hard and he did as well. That was our first "I love you's" He came back in September for a family reunion in Hereford and I spent that time with him and his family as well. That is when my interest in Catholicism was sparked. His entire family is Catholic and it got me curious about it.

I went to visit him in October and that's when things started to change. I noticed a difference in him up there but I tried to ignore my concerns. In the fall that year he found out that his job in Connecticut was being dissolved and he would have to transfer elsewhere. We got a very hopeful moment when there was an opening in Boise City, OK which is only three hours away from here. Unfortunately, that didn't pan out because he got a bad report from his chief that he didn't get along with. Ultimately he decided to go to isolated duty in Alaska for a year so that he wouldn't have to go to a boat. I didn't like that, but I tried to accept it. I figured that we could survive a year and that would mean that he could get his choice of locations when he got out.

Things just went downhill however. I don't have any explanations as to what changed in him, but something did. I never got any answers from him about it and that was probably the hardest thing to deal with. I knew something was wrong for a long time, but he would never open up and be honest with me about it. Eventually he flat out said (with much cajoling) that we were in different places and things had changed for him. This happened days before I was supposed to meet him in Austin for a final good-bye before he left for Alaska. It was a hard pill to swallow, but I had to accept it.

During the time he trained before his Alaska jaunt, I started going to the Catholic Church. I started changing and when I was hit with loss of the love of my life I decided that it wasn't God's will for us to be together at least at this time. I felt that Marty had served a purpose to help me find my faith and his job was done. I still hurt terribly, but I accepted it. I went to Austin anyway to have my bit of closure. Although technically I was going to officially break-up with him, it was really just me having to let go of him.

It was probably one of the most painful and most accepted break-ups I've ever been through. I had fallen very deeply. It hurt more to lose him than it did to lose my husband that I had been married to for five years. It took a great deal of time to get over him. We've stayed in touch to some degree, but I had to force myself to keep my distance for a long time because the pain was too much. I removed him from my IM list because I couldn't stand to see him online. I knew that I would be too tempted to maintain contact and I would end up being hurt because of it.

It helped that he was in Alaska and there was no way I could see him. During that year I heard from him a handful of times. When he got out he was stationed and still is in Key West, Florida. We're still on friendly terms and once in a while he'll pop up with a message or a phone call.

I finally got over him after about year. I have had moments where I still think about him and his name just flashes in my head every so often. I tend to push most thoughts out of my head. Sometimes it hurts. Mostly it's tiresome. I realize that perhaps we weren't really meant for each other.

I can't say that he simply broke my heart. I played a part in it with my insecurity. I had just come out of a marriage where my self-esteem had hit rock bottom and I had a hard time letting go of some bad habits. I am in a very different place now but unfortunately in life we don't get second chances. I don't know that I really want one with him because there are some issues with him that would be difficult to deal with. But at the same time, we had some magical moments and I had never felt more loved (if only briefly) in my life. I wonder if I will ever find that again.

So that's it. That's Marty. Hopefully that answers your question... and then some.