4

Everything seems to be coming together well. Seems to be. It doesn't stop the nervousness from creeping into my stomach and making me check my itinerary and check lists to make sure I've put everything on each that needs to be there, but I'm pretty sure it's the reality. I've always been a bit of a worrier (more than a bit, really).
And you know I'm a little nervous when I'm dreaming about ex-girlfriends, which is what happened last night. I don't remember all the specifics of the dream, but it was basically a jury system, where they were deciding whether I was worthy to marry anyone. (It was a little too Beckett for my taste.) This is quite frightening if you're at all aware of my dating history and the way some (too many) of my relationships ended. The funny thing is that none of the relationships that ended so badly were really represented. My psyche saving me from all of it? Or saving it for later? Who knows.
But.
The dream does bring out one of my bigger worries about marriage: I have worried that I won't be a good husband (past tense for the most part). It's definitely something Dinah and I have talked about (communication is good, that's in my favor, right?). And not to lay this all at the feet of my father (because clearly I wasn't a good partner to everyone when he was around and setting a decent example), but my consciousness of being a good partner has really gone up since he's been gone. Which makes sense. You have someone pegged as one thing and then they show you they are something completely different. It shakes you. It's not just about what I learned about him, it's about (as with most things for me it seems) what I learned about myself. Or rather, what it was I could learn about myself.
I cheated on one girlfriend back in college. We were sort of on a break or broken-up, but that's just semantics and such. Clearly this isn't the equal of cheating on your wife of 30 years, but it was probably the thing I've done in my life that I'm least proud of. Partially that's because I really honestly liked the girl I cheated on. I felt most of the time that she was too good for me, and in the end I proved that to be true. But, I also was disappointed in myself because I didn't think I was that guy. Or I didn't want to be that guy. I wanted to be the guy who deserved her. (Note. Dad was still around. So, this is all on me. Not trying to blame him. Just making a comparison.)
And after that relationship, I put myself in stupid situations time and again, until I finally was forced to realize how poorly I was handling myself. And then I took almost 3 years off of dating. Truthfully, I didn't mean for it to last that long, but it did. And it really needed to.
I wish there was a moment of epiphany when I realized I'm a good person, living on this earth searching for love and acceptance just like every other creature on the earth. There wasn't, though. Which isn't to say the time wasn't worthwhile, because it was so worth it. During those 3 years, I thought about myself and why I had been doing the things I had been doing and how I could do things better.
And I made a lot of progress. And as Dinah could tell you, I'm not there yet. I'm not the good partner I want to be. I have my areas I need to look at and keep working on. But I am heading in the right direction, I think. And despite my darkest concerns about becoming my father, I have had plenty of time to think about how to be the guy I want to be.
Now if I could only say I knew anything about carpentry, I'd be in real good husband-shape.