This past Easter my family gathered at my grandparents' home in New Carlisle. All my cousins were there, and their kids as well. Matthew and Shelby just gave birth to a son, and I was afraid to hold him (babies are like porcelain dolls, and I have a tendency to break porcelain). Mom held him, though, as she always does with babies, and she asked me when I'd bring her one to hold. I just laughed, but truth be told there's envy towards those who've been lucky enough to find someone to love and build a family with. Family is one of the key elements to what I want out of life, if not the key element, and my desire for a family--a wonderful wife and children--has been integral to my desires for as long as I can remember.
Marriage and a family has been an ever-present idea, and no matter the twists and turns that my life goals have taken over the past eleven years, the desire for a family has always been front-&-center. During high school I'd listen to Straylight Run constantly, and every time Existentialism on Prom Night came across the Jeep's CD player (and it did, A LOT, since it was jammed on that song), I'd imagine that first honeymoon night, entangled in the sheets with the morning sun cutting through the blinds. My desire for family was the substance of my prayers, and I had a tendency to write cutthroat poems that would make even the most die-hard preteen emo girl exclaim, "At least I'm not THAT bad!" Reading these poems is comical nowadays, and in college my friends and I would gather in my dorm room and read them together, buckling over in laughter. Though I graduated from the emo poem phase, my stories since high school have always been rife with romance (albeit tragic). In 36 Hours, the main character's blossoming romance is ruined by a zombie bite; in Flowers Quickly Fading, the damsel in distress is hit with a car at a small-town festival; in losing touching searching, the premise of the book is the main character's efforts to reassemble his life after losing the one he loved to betrayal. My latest book took the same route as 36 Hours, the main character's love interest taken by the plague. Dwellers of the Night closed on a mantra I'd come to believe wholeheartedly by 2010:
~ family ~
Marriage and a family has been an ever-present idea, and no matter the twists and turns that my life goals have taken over the past eleven years, the desire for a family has always been front-&-center. During high school I'd listen to Straylight Run constantly, and every time Existentialism on Prom Night came across the Jeep's CD player (and it did, A LOT, since it was jammed on that song), I'd imagine that first honeymoon night, entangled in the sheets with the morning sun cutting through the blinds. My desire for family was the substance of my prayers, and I had a tendency to write cutthroat poems that would make even the most die-hard preteen emo girl exclaim, "At least I'm not THAT bad!" Reading these poems is comical nowadays, and in college my friends and I would gather in my dorm room and read them together, buckling over in laughter. Though I graduated from the emo poem phase, my stories since high school have always been rife with romance (albeit tragic). In 36 Hours, the main character's blossoming romance is ruined by a zombie bite; in Flowers Quickly Fading, the damsel in distress is hit with a car at a small-town festival; in losing touching searching, the premise of the book is the main character's efforts to reassemble his life after losing the one he loved to betrayal. My latest book took the same route as 36 Hours, the main character's love interest taken by the plague. Dwellers of the Night closed on a mantra I'd come to believe wholeheartedly by 2010:
"What you want, you can't have.
What you have, you can't keep.
And everything you love will, eventually, be taken from you."
The boisterous and proud hopes of a young high school boy, confident he'd find love and family, sure that God would deliver his greatest dream, were crushed during college. I wasn't without warning: in my first college course, the teacher asked us what we wanted to do, and of course I said I wanted to get married, start a family, and work at a church somewhere in Colorado. She warned me that it probably wouldn't come to pass, and my heart turned to stone behind my ribs. College was HELL, and I never would've imagined that by 26 I'd still be single, absent prospects, unsuccessful, dirt poor, barely holding on at times. I imagined that by age 24 I'd be married with a kid or two, working at a church, advancing God's kingdom. None of that came to pass, none of it, and as the disappointments and heartaches mounted, one after the other, the futility of this hope became clear: it simply wasn't something for me. Perhaps I was too ugly, too short, too quirky. Maybe I just didn't have the personality that women were drawn to, and these insecurities found fodder: I was told, by numerous girls, that they'd date me if it weren't for my looks or personality. "Kick them to the curb," you say, and I did: but their words stayed with me.
I tried to kill this hope, because hope's like barbed wire: the tighter you hold on, the more it hurts you. I figured if I just let go, gave it up, there wouldn't be so much pain. And I was right: the pain subsided. But it wasn't replaced by peace or contentment, but by a vacancy in my heart, a brooding emptiness. Hope is resilient, and killing it off is akin to self-mutilation: in the end, without this hope, I was less of a man. It's become clear to me, over the past year, that I must EMBRACE this hope and FIGHT the lies that declare marriage and a family isn't for me, the lies about how I'm not good enough for any of it. The insecurities about my looks, my height, my personality, my quirks, all these insecurities be damned. I need to acknowledge what people tell me: I'm genuine, sincere, loving, funny, gentle, compassionate, friendly and intelligent. I need to acknowledge that I do indeed have a lot going for me. Any vision formulated must make this front-&-center, because that where it genuinely rests in my own heart.
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