C
Carl Weatherford


Personal experience of a young mans quest to find true love.


Memoir & Life Stories All public.

#truelove?
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“Only if”

Someone wise once told me, "One day you will find that special girl that will fill that void son. I know you don't believe me as I know the pain you feel. I once too was in your shoes and just as you feel now I did as well. You don't believe me and that's fine. When I was where you are I wouldn't have either. Keep doing what you're doing and tell those who don't believe in you to kiss your ass. No more regrets boy and no more wasted days."
Several years ago I was at a good friends fathers home when I pulled up to drink a few beers and watch some football. It was his grandfather whom approached as I sat down in a lawn chair, precariously placed, at the edge of the crowd. I'd made the obligatory introductions and hellos. This man whom I've never met, John's grandfather, drug his chair across the driveway and next to mine. Handed me a cold beer and preceded to read me like an open book. Our conversation preceded to depths beyond any of which I've gone with a complete stranger. To this day I cannot figure out how in such little time he seemed to know so much.
That was four years ago during a somewhat turbulent time in my life one of which I felt I was treading water and at any moment would drown from exhaustion. I however did not. I took a few more good licks before I "swam" again and found solid ground. Its where I sit now in search of that illusive one that will bring sunshine to cloudy days, and warmth to those that seem unbearably cold.

I learned my lessons the hard way, all of them, some might say. I think I've proved imperialistically the definition of insanity. For forever and a day I spent my time with my head buried in the sand refusing to accept what was going on around me. It was a web of destructive behavior I wove and as it unraveled before me I shoved my head that much deeper into the sand. Maybe it was not water I was treading but quicksand. Maybe I'd not learned to swim but instead quit to struggle. None-the-less it is upon solid ground I stand.
In my past I did all the right things for the wrong reasons and the wrong things for well... wrong reasons. I went to college and majored in accounting only because numbers are easy and make sense to me. The problem laid in the fact that it was all to easy and way to boring. I got married because she got pregnant and quit school to become a father and husband. Stupid I know but hind sight is 20/20 or so I hear. All I was looking for was a good excuse anyway or at least one that would pacify my parents.
I should have went to culinary school but we all know no heterosexual male goes to college to learn to cook (thus instilled in me from my father). So I did the next best thing and quit school altogether. Retail sales is where I landed and soon into management. It wasn't a silver tongue I was gifted with but instead boyish good looks that melted little old ladies like butter on a warm day. I found it all to easy to tell the truth about what was being sold and what was really on sale. This too aided in my abilities. I was a mediocre sales man not good not bad just average. It was probably my obsessive organizational skills and above average ability to compute numbers that sky rocketed my success with such quickness. I might add that I was overly committed as well, because we remember I asked and said "I do" for all the wrong reasons. So I was not all that interested in being home anyway.
After quite a bit of turbulence and tribulation in my life I decided or more appropriately realized that I gain nothing by making other people happy. I make sacrifices still of course but they are forged from love and not expectations. For example I've gone without so my children didn't have to. I did this because I love them more than anything on Gods green earth not because I was expected to. This was more of second nature than an actual choice and it is that sort of connection I seek in a relationship. Not one of father child but one born of something greater than life its self.
I seek that special someone that allows me to open doors not because its expected but because she notices that look in my eyes when I see her smile (as she does when I open her door). I seek to find that special someone that allows it to be possible to have an entire conversation with hardly saying a thing. Someone that can add grey to what I see as black and white. Someone who does not care where I've come from because they see where I'm going. I seek someone to encourage, support, and stand by me yet stubborn enough (born from a love for me) that I have to force behind me to shield her from harm.
I've all but given up hope that such a beautiful creature exists born of blood and not of fairy tales or text or the silver screen. Yet still I cannot forget what that wise man once said and so I continue to hope of one day making my dreams, my reality. And those whom utter its impossibility can kiss my ass.

April 22, 2020, 2:58 p.m. 1 Report Embed Follow story
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