Chapter 4 – Falling in Love
It’s hard to imagine that I would fall in love again or build a career as a successful social worker. I was so focused on the pain of the loss of Celta that I doubted I could help others. This was a message I heard from my mother. My career development occurred in parallel with the relationship that I found but I will discuss that later.
This topic of the love story between Lynn and me is the topic of another book in itself.
I moved to Wilmington, North Carolina in April of 1992. I received a contract job as a technical writer. Getting away from my mother was the best part of this initially. My father worked a great deal more than my mother and/or he was less involved in my life as I remember things.
With growing confidence in my writing, I have also gained confidence in myself. Logically and consciously, I didn’t have any reason not to love myself, but I still carried shame from my family of origin.
Back then I was religious, and I didn’t understand why God had shown me love and taken that away. So, I was angry and still grieving.
I started going to the poetry readings at the Coastline Convention Center on Sundays. The very first week in Wilmington, I went on the first Sunday after the first week of work. I knew I needed to be comfortable being the center of attention, which had never happened previously in front of a group. I was going to be a therapist, and we sometimes must do group therapy.
Indeed, during that very first week of attendance at the event, I got up to the microphone and shared my poetry. Dusty was a host at the lounge as well as the emcee for the poetry events. She had a motherly presence that was warm and needed. Whatever that is that is motherly, I would probably say that we all need that or can benefit from it… I feel that way even 32 years later.
I joined with others in attending the local events for poets – there was a sense in which this was shared with everyone and that we were a tight community. In fact, it seemed like we were friends. If some event was happening in town that would be of interest to the poetry community, we were likely to see the same people there and over time this extended to events that were not related to poetry.
I am getting ahead of myself because I was thinking about going canoeing with the special person in my life, but I haven’t mentioned her yet.
As the weekend of July 4th of that year (1992) was coming up, one of the participants at the open mic poetry readings was hosting a poetry reading event on that weekend. I had been noticing Lynn sometime after I started attending the readings on Sundays. I had started coming in early April. Initially, I was sharing poems about the grief and the positive memories I had with Celta. Anyway, I had been noticing that Lynn was keeping to herself and did not seem to have anyone in her life.
Somehow, I found the courage to ask her if she wanted to go with me. To the reading the next week. It was seemingly very simple for me. In retrospect, at times over the years, I might have thought she was out of my league. Yet, she agreed, and I received her phone number. It was somewhat too easy in that I didn’t even have to ask for her phone number, just if she wanted to go with me and she just started giving me her phone number.
I suggest that we could go somewhere on Saturday the 4th also. It’s amazing how easy this was for me. Perhaps because it was coming so soon after the experience of feeling so special in the eyes and heart of Celta. I might have grieved the loss of Celta, and it was a shock.
Lynn had Cystic Fibrosis, which I vaguely knew about when I asked her to join me for the upcoming weekend. This is a chronic and genetic illness. The only thing I noticed was a cough initially.
I thought I was asking her out on a date but being inexperienced and shy, I was taken back when after the at the end of the day on July 4, 1992, after watching the fireworks over the Cape Fear River, when we were walking past where Lynn worked someone asked if I was her boyfriend and she said, “no, we are just friends.”
During the relationship with Celta, I would tell her I love her every day. I also held hands and cuddled with her. Yet the topic of us being boyfriend and girlfriend never came up. With Lynn things were somewhat the same. I liked the way things developed naturally without the formality of asking for something to be defined.
That first weekend, I only held Lynn’s hand when I felt she was going to slip on the rocks at the Jetty. I started seeing Lynn every day after that first date – if that was what it was. Lynn lived across the street from the beach at Wrightsville Beach. I thought about whether Lynn wanted to hold hands when we walked on the beach, together.
She would say later that she was glad I was so persistent. I guess initially I was more interested in building a relationship than she was, but it is unclear when that changed – after a couple of weeks or a few weeks... a month? It didn’t take long.
It was also great that the first kiss was an event that developed mutually and without me having to take the lead. It seemed that way. It just happened. I felt calm and peaceful. Did I tilt my head to the side first? It seemed to just happen. She held onto me and pressed herself close to me. It was on the beach near Johnnie Mercer’s Pier. My awareness of whether there were people around faded away.
I had religious issues that held back how far we would go in the time before we were living together as husband and wife. This is a complicated topic. Lynn did not have the experience of religious brainwashing that made certain things seem dirty or wrong to the God of my Catholic Christian faith. I think that if she had removed her top or even more, she would know that one thing would lead to the next and that would be a problem for me – that is how I came to understand what would have been going through her mind.
Consent was implied by both of us. One year into the relationship, Lynn brought up the topic of whether we were more than friends and if I wanted us to be boyfriend and girlfriend. That was so helpful. I wasn’t afraid of answering that yes, I wanted us to be boyfriend and girlfriend. She had brought it up after we had been passionate outside of my home at the time with two female roommates.
A year later we decided to get engaged. It was the most wonderful and blissful moment of my life when I saw her tears of joy when I began to give her the engagement ring that we had picked out together. It was so amazing... she knew I was going to show up that day with the ring as the lady at the jewelry shop said, “your fiancé can pick up the ring on Monday.”
It became clear from the conversations we had with the clinic where Lynn received her treatment for health maintenance that if the state knew that we were married, they would count both of our incomes and Lynn would not have access to medical care. This was an issue for me because of how I was raised within the church. They put the fear of a God in me.
However, it was clear that after we got engaged when Lynn’s mother offered to buy a house for us to rent, it was as husband and wife. She was not buying a house for us to be roommates. I reasoned based on several factors that this was the right thing to do, to live as husband and wife without a wedding or civil wedding license. The church would not allow us to even have the wedding ceremony without a “legal” secular marriage license. This was not an option.
No good God would deprive someone with a genetic illness the ability to enjoy all the joys of living as husband wife after falling in love and needing to take the relationship to the next level. On rare occasions during the years, we lived as husband and wife, I expressed something in words that made Lynn ask if I regretted what we did together. I would say “no” and feel shame for making her doubt that I regretted making love, expressing our love for each other. This only happened on three occasions and not on the hundreds of other days and moments when I might have also expressed shame.
I was ashamed of my shame.
During those many years together, it was so amazing. Whether it was getting flowers for Valentine’s Day, buying gifts for my girlfriend, or later my fiancée, and while thinking about the idea of having someone I loved and who loved me. I wanted to share that with others. It was as if I had experienced something spiritual. I wanted to share that with others as well. This is unique for a shy person like me to want to announce the details of my life.
I have heard someone not long ago who described a special love or special relationship and yet somehow, the woman he loved was and had been seeing him hurt while living under the same roof for a couple of weeks. I NEVER let a few hours go by if that long if I knew that Lynn was hurting, and it had to do with the relationship. I would try to fix things. It wasn’t hard to see if I had said some hurtful things. Many times, when that happened, I immediately made amends for blurting out something I didn’t mean.
For years we lived as husband and wife. I never took what I had for granted. I certainly never did anything to lessen the love that I would deserve from Lynn. It never made sense to me the way some people do things to their spouses because they think that they have them and they won’t leave.
So many times, I thought I had discovered something that no one else had and I wanted to share that discovery with others. This was discussed elsewhere in my book “Overcoming Shyness & Loving Lynn – A Memoir.” So, I will be brief here and just say that this went on for years, until she got sick. Before I get to that, I want to describe the facts about the career that I chose.
The only thing that is worth adding is that when Lynn and I got started living as husband and wife in 1994, I was 28. I was still dealing with the flashbacks of physical, emotional and psychological abuse from my parents. This came out in nightmares. Only while asleep would I fight back (as my brother had but that’s another story). I imagined that my arms had actually moved in a way that I could have hit Lynn who was sleeping next to me. I was wrong. Lynn said that my arms were not actually moving.
The idea of harming another person was unthinkable. The idea of even unconsciously and accidentally hurting Lynn by moving my arms while asleep in such a way as to hit her... this was so impossible and unimaginable!
I have heard a therapist self-disclose that even her husband raised his hand in some way as if he was going to hit her. I then mentioned that I could not imagine doing that which might not seem like the best way to respond or bring up what my therapist had self-disclosed.
We were both committed to the relationship and making sure it worked. I have described this in more detail in another memoir of mine which is titled “Overcoming Shyness & Loving Lynn.
This entire amazing story of a powerful love, a normal life as husband and wife, all the pleasure and joy... all the amazing experiences of this union... this would vanish when Lynn got very sick in late July 2000 at the same time when other major overwhelming experiences were occuring at that same time.