My story and I’m sticking with it: How I quit looking for a caretaker and found my life partner in 27 or so not-so-easy lessons

Note: My story and I’m sticking with it” was originally published in Western North Carolina Woman, June 2005

“Be careful, Brucie, you might get hurt.” A frequent refrain from my great-grandmother and great-aunt while I was growing up in the late ’40s. Well meaning though they may have been, each hovered over me like a domineering mother hen. And my mom, Sue, filled with the intense desire to protect me from polio, tended to isolate me from others who might be carriers of the disease. “Better come in and rest now, Brucie. You don’t want to get too tired.” My dad, Mack, bless his heart, was so busy working on his electrical engineering degree at Southern Methodist University on the G.I. Bill and earning extra money on the night shift at the local Dr Pepper plant that I only saw him on weekends.

It’s no wonder then that I lived my early life as a shy, sensitive, scrawny boy with little self confidence in my own abilities and considerable difficulty relating to children my age, especially those of the opposite sex. I learned to dance to the tune of the women in my life in order to get their approval, in order to be taken care of, in order (in my little mind) to survive. But then I resented them for their smothering “love,” for telling me what to do and how to do it and for thwarting my embryonic desire for independence. (more…)

Tuesday, July 5th, 2005