Brave Enough To Be Bliss

The next morning at my bridal breakfast it became clear, or I thought it did from overhearing conversations, that he had drank too much, so when he called, I was not happy. I remember having serious doubts about going through with the wedding. It had nothing to do with love, I think there was a part of me that was just so scared the marriage would fail that I wanted to end it before it even started. But then I vividly remember thinking, I got lucky he even asked me to marry him in the first place, and no one else was ever going to, so if I ever wanted to be married and have a baby, I had better go through with it. Certainly, those are not ideal thoughts to have just hours before your wedding.

“People love to the level they love themselves, communicate to the level of their self -awareness, and behave to the level of their healed trauma.” Unknown

We were married the Saturday after Thanksgiving, November 27, 1993. That was the only time we could find where we both could get away from the various sports schedules. We drove to Vail, Colorado, for our honeymoon. I had found an ad in Bride magazine for a $400 honeymoon package, and we scrimped and saved to pay for it. Fortunately, there was a dollar dance at the wedding reception with some generous guests who funded the gas and meals for the trip. The July 14 journal entry mentioned the trip to Atlanta when we had traveled to the College Sports Information Directors of America convention. I had an Amoco gas credit card so I thought we could use that for gas but didn’t count on there not being Amoco gas stations everywhere we needed one. We also didn’t think about parking downtown in a big city, so when we checked in there was a $75 charge for that, which took virtually every penny we had. Most of my meals were provided, so I would take what I could back to the room for him. We got a reprieve when we checked out as they refunded the parking expense since as convention guests, we weren’t supposed to have been charged for that. Whew, that was a relief because we hadn’t figured out how we were going to get enough money for gas to make it back to Lawrence. Thinking back on both those trips, he wasn’t overly concerned and was confident we would figure it out financially. I, on the other hand, was worried the whole time and blamed myself for being in the situation at all. It was easy to blame myself for everything. I’d been doing it as long as I could remember when anything would go wron g. If only I could do better, be better, bad things wouldn’t happen. We spent our first Christmas married traveling with the women’s basketball team to a tournament in New York City. Since he was an athletic trainer, he was able to fill in for the usual female trainer and she was able to spend the holiday with her husband, so it worked out well for all of us. That spring, he traveled with the baseball team that went to the College World Series, which extended an already long season. We had decided if we wanted to have a family, we would both need to take a different direction with our careers, so we found jobs and moved to the Kansas City metropolitan area in June of 1994. As I read through the journal, I began to wonder if it was my neediness that led to that decision. I had absolutely no recollection of being so dependent on him. In my mind, I had always been independent, so having to read through the journal was very difficult. I just didn’t remember those feelings at all and am not sure if I expressed them to him verbally at the time or just wrote it. My guess is the full expression was done in writing and maybe some was verbal or behavioral. It’s really a good thing this journal surfaced because if I only had my memory to count on for this timeframe, the story would be completely different. I can look back with compassion on this troubled young woman, but it’s really tough to read my own words and see so clearly how fear impacted me and our relationship. I wrote those words, so I must have really felt that way, but I can’t recall ever feeling that dependent on someone. It’s like when he came into my life, I became completely reliant on him for every emotional need. There were also a couple times in the journal where I mentioned “respect , ” that I think are clues to issues that have arisen throughout my life when I get the sense a man is trying to “control” me in any way.

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