10 Months Later!!

Oh my, how time flies!!  I can't believe it has been almost 1 year since my first and only blog entry, I can hear Carolyn now saying - "well about time!!"

So much has happened in the past year that I really don't know where to start.  I suppose firstly I should relate the saddness I felt when I was to learn that Barry (yes the reason for my first blog) had left the church, had moved to Gunnedah and was engaged!!  Yes, you did read that correctly - all this in the space of 4 months from when we stopped seeing each other, even though he continued emailing me and calling. I seriously wonder whether everything he told me was the truth and perhaps I was not the only woman he was seeing - I guess I will never really know. I asked him for an explanantion and his reply was "circumstances change" - what a cop out!!

So, since April this year I have been seeing a gentleman who lives closer and thinks I'm beautiful - I keep telling him he needs glasses.. lol.  We get on very well and generally see each other on the weekends (he's italian and a fabulous cook - I need to seriously go on a diet!!), although he does call me every day. However there is a stumbling block - he is married. His story in a nutshell is that his wife has had a mental illness for most of their married life and is currently in a nursing home (has been for 6 years). She has bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and had a stroke a number of years ago and is wheelchair bound. Two months ago she was diagnosed with lung cancer and has refused active treatment, so the prognosis is about 6 months. He is an amazing man, he drives to see her almost daily, does all her washing, then comes home, cooks, cleans and looks after all the household chores.

I'm not sure where this relationship will go, but at the moment I'm just going with the flow, taking it one day at a time.  

Where to Begin?

Well I suppose it's time to finally write something on this blog page. My friend Carolyn (from work) has a wonderful page that is so interesting to read and she was my inspiration for doing this. I'm not going to rehash all my past but if you're interested you can check that information out on my myspace page: www.myspace.com/abbwoman

The past 6 months have been a bit of a whirlwind with regard to relationships. Through my facebook page I met a lovely man who sent me an email and we started corresponding. This then became constant contact by phone and email and a pattern was set. We became very close and eventually decided to meet, he drove from Bega and I from Sydney and we met at a lovely place on the south coast called Berry.

I don't think either of us stopped smiling the whole time and we knew we had something special. Over the following months our feelings deepened and we eventually decided to spend five days toegther to see how things went in close proximity for that period of time. We needn't have worried, we felt so comfortable with each other and the five days just flew. Now to the difficult bit. 

He is a Jehovah's Witness (a religion I knew nothing about) and lived his life according to the scriptures (well in essence this was not strictly correct, as he'd just spent some very intimate time with me). He was not divorced but had been separated from his wife for 13 years but in fact was not 'free' to be with me in any real relationship. This could only happen if his wife divorced him or she died.

Over the next month or so this dilemma became the constant topic of our conversations, as I was ready to take our relationship to the next level and he wasn't able to do this although he had fallen in love with me.  The sad thing for me was that I had openly told family and friends about this wonderful man in my life and yet not a living soul (none of his brother or sisters, nor his six children) knew that I even existed or that he was in love with me. I was starting to feel like a mistress - not something I was happy about at all.

In August we agreed to meet again for a romantic 3 days away but I had decided that we had to thrash this out once and for all at this meeting, so I knew where I stood. My plan was to talk about it on the Monday and still enjoy our 3 nights together before hand, but this wasn't how it was and in retrospect probably for the better.

The upshot was that he couldn't be with me, he was an 'elder' in the church, was being a hypocrit spending time with me, loving me and there was nothing he could do about it. Of course, I could hear my friends and family saying "why doesn't he go to the church elders and discuss this with them"?  But in the end he wasn't prepared to lose face and change anything in his life,  nor to lose his position within the ministry. So..... I've cried, I've asked myself why, and cried some more... but I deserve much better than this and so it's time for me to move on and start a fresh. It will be interesting to see what the next chapter in my life will be.