Wallowing Week. Part 1

I'm going to wallow this week. John's memorial is Sunday. Then I will try to move on.

I got my ring back yesterday, and it meant a lot. I didn't think it would, but it did.

John said something like "It was like you were waiting for cosmic permission to trust yourself." The thing is, on one level, I am quite conventionally attractive for a size 14. But the size 14 thing seems to always be the 'but.' That said, I probably have more baggage about my weight because I was always heavy and I used to be much heavier (a size 22).

And when I opened the envelope from his sister, I realized that John had carried my ring with him for the last year and a half. And he had asked for it. I have to believe that no man would ask a woman that he is dating to borrow the ring she wears on her ring finger, without it meaning he was considering proposing. John was a smart man. He had to know that somewhere. It is possible he freaked out. It is possible he changed his mind. But at some point he thought I was a woman he could spend the rest of his life with. He had to. There is no other explanation.

Even if he couldn't say it, I think he loved me.

There are times it felt like the more he got to know me, the less he approved of me. But the more I got to know him, the more I thought there were things that were quite odd. I was uncomfortable with him believing he needed to carry a blade in his boot all the time. I was uncomfortable when he took out the single tail whip in public. I never disapproved of him the way he did of me. But it made me uncomfortable. Or maybe I did disapprove in unspoken ways. I don't know.

He said once, there was a reason he always came back to me. I was difficult, but he always came back.

In his last slew of e-mails, he called me arrogant for not defending what I do. He was critical on several occasions of my profession and I kind of would say something like "you know, that what I did my advanced work in." What I meant was not "I know more than you" but "be gentle--this is important to me." But he thought I meant the former. I have less certainty about aspects of my profession being relevant or mattering. If I were to do it over, I would take a different career path. John, on the other hand, loved every aspect of his work. I wish I'd understood that more. I wish we could have talked that through. I wish his dad hadn't died and he his company hadn't closed and he hadn't left our town and he had proposed and we got married and I got pregnant and we went for life insurance and he'd had to have a physical to get life insurance and they found the problem and figured out how to treat it and we could live happily ever after. That's what I really wish.

I seem to be facing the possibility that I will never meet someone. If this is the life I've got, what do I want it to look like? Do I want to have a kid by myself? I need to make that decision soon. I'm thinking maybe yes.