Day Seven Thousand Three Hundred Fifty Seven

That’s how many days I’ve had this account.  When I started it, I didn’t really know where to go with it, so it sat inactive for a few weeks.  And then Rick dumped me.  He claimed to still love me.  We’d had a wonderfully passionate romance for some time and he was the one who first used the word “love.”  But he was married.  He and his wife were swingers/poly, and I knew this going in.  I didn’t intend to fall in love with him, but it happened.
So when he dumped me, I didn’t know how I’d ever feel whole again.  Those journal entries begin here.
It’s truly humiliating to read those entries now.  I wasted so much energy on him and bad as it was, it was the best relationship I’d ever had until then.

Until I met Adina. Adina helped me to realize that I didn’t need a man.  I just needed someone to love me and to think of me.  Next summer will be twenty years that she’s been in my life.  I don’t really understand my feelings for her, because I’ve never been sexually attracted to women, and I’m not attracted to her like that.  But I don’t ever want to know a day without her in it.

And I refuse to believe that it is coincidence that when I found the man of my dreams he shares her birthday.  They have the same three initials (four if you count the fact that both of them have last names that begin with “Sh”).

Drew (short for Andrew) and I have been together for 10 years.  We’ve been married for two, and every day we look into each other’s eyes and talk about how much we appreciate one another.

Rick had talked about having his vasectomy reversed so that we could have a child together.  Just more lies to keep me on the hook.  (I have to confess a bit of schadenfreude.  Shortly after he and I broke up for good, she got a boyfriend and spent more time with him.  They ended up divorcing. It just made me feel even dumber, really.

I never got to have children of my own, but I have a collection of people who cam into my life when they were children who still invite me into theirs now that they are married with kids.  I have so much love and I’ve realized it all came from loving freely.

I’ve even picked up a friend or two here on Open Diary.  In fact, one of them, Heffay, turns out to be a distant cousin, and now he’s a dear friend.  I’ll keep writing.   Hope y’all find peace and joy.

Love,
Jenna