Unspoken Abandonment (29 page)

Prior to
that
first date, Abby and I spent a few days talking on the phone and texting back and forth.
She began to tell me about her life
,
and I told her about
m
ine
.
We talked on the phone for hours one night, just talking about our interests, our lives, and just starting to get to know one another. Abby told me about her family and her job, and I told Abby about my friends and my hobbies. We were both dying for that first date to come.

On our first date, we went for a quick dinner before going out for the night. We sat in the restaurant booth, across from one another, and Abby said, “I have something for you.”

“For me?” I asked. “You didn’t need to get me anything.”

Abby fished through her purse and said, “I’ll pass it to you under the table.” She then leaned forward w
ith her arms obviously extended
,
and
she
looked at me with the most adorable smile.

I reached under the table
and grasped what I could feel was a DVD case. I asked, “What is this?”

As I brought it up to see what was in my hand, Abby said, “Yo
u said you loved
The Simpsons
,
and
I knew
that just came out, so I got it for you.
”

I looked at what Abby had handed me
,
and
I
saw it was the
newly released
Simpsons Movie
on DVD.
She knew that I
enjoyed watching
the show
,
from our earlier conversations, and I
had
n
o
t
yet
seen the movie.
I could
n
o
t believe she had paid
such close
attention
to everything I told her
.
My h
eart
began to
completely melt, and it has
stayed that way ever since. I knew right then and there that she was the
one I was always searching for, and now I had found her.

Our first date was
a series of minor catastrophes, e
very plan fell apart, and basica
lly nothing went right. Somehow
it did
n
o
t matter, and we made the best of every
minute we had together
. Abby and
I still refer to it as “the best-
worst-date-ever.
”

Th
at
first date turned into a second date, then a third date, and so on, until we fell absolutely in love with each
other.
Our relationship moved forward at a very steady pace, and I was eternally thankful I was in the right place when I met Abby. I sometimes look back and think to mys
elf:
if I had not come so far by
the time I met her, Abby and I probably would not have worked. Honestly, we could
n
o
t have
made it together
.
I would have always felt as if she deserved more or better than what I was.
For a long time, I felt that way about everything.
With t
he way things unfolded
in the past
, I unnecessarily found myself in a state of mind where I honestly believed I was
n
o
t
deserving
of any
of the gifts
life
had
blessed me with. With Abby, I knew she was exactly where I belonged.

One night, Abby and I were on the couch, talking about our childhoods.

Abby asked, “Tell me something. What is your biggest regret from when you were a kid?”

“
That’s easy,” I said. “Commando.
M
y biggest regret is Commando.”

“Be serious!” she said.

“I am being serious. My biggest regret is
not beating
Commando.”

She asked, “Ok, what is Commando?”

“Do you remember the old original Nintendo system?” I asked. I continued, “The problem with it was that you couldn’t save your progress. You played the game
, but when you shut it off you lost everything
,
and
you
needed to start all over
the
next time
you played
.”

“And what does this have to do with childhood regret?” she asked.

“Well, when I was a kid I loved the game Commando. I played it every day after school and
came
so close to beating it. For more than a
week, I played every day after school until I went to bed. Rather than turn it off and
have to
start all over again, I put the game on pause and left the Nintendo on. After
nine
straight days of playing, I was so close to beating the game, but it was time for bed. I left the game on pause and went to sleep, but when I woke up in the morning
,
my Nintendo was
turned
off. I went nuts
,
and
I
started asking what happened to my game. My mother came in and told me
that
I left
my Nintendo
on
‘
by accident
,’
so she turned it off for me.”

Abby looked at me for a moment like I was crazy before I finished, “I
never played the game again. So
not beating Commando was my biggest regret.”

“You’re an idiot,” Abby laughingly said.

I did
n
o
t think much of that conversation at all, until a few weeks later when Abby came to me with a box.

“I have a surprise for you,” she said.

I asked, “What’s this?”

“Just ope
n it. Come on… Come on… Open it!
”

I opened the box
,
and I saw an origina
l Nintendo system from the 1980
s. It had all of the cords and the original controllers.

Abby said, “I found this place online that rebuilds these and makes them like new again.
L
ook inside, there’s more.”

As I looked through the newspaper that was being used as padding, I found a game cartridge. It was the original Commando.

“Now you can finally beat it,” Abby said with a smile.

I set the Nintendo up and started playing the game. It was really not how I remembered it. The game actually
fell far short
compared to
the game systems
we
a
re used to
playing
now, but the effect it had was amazing. Playing that game
,
for the first time in twenty
-some
years
,
reminded me of being eleven again. I was blown away that she did this for me. I was blown away at who I had found.

Time past and over the years since I met Abby, there have been a lot of “Nintendos” between us, metaphorically speaking. It seems like we live our lives for each other, and that makes me happy. That
i
s not to say we do
n
o
t have little quarrels and spats like everyone does. We argue sometimes if I do
n
o
t clean up after myself or if she spends too much money at the mall, but we never lose focus on what really matters. From the moment I met her, I have never gone a single day w
here I did
n
o
t feel loved, and that is
truly
more important to me than anything.
It i
s a feeling I think is lost
or abandoned o
n m
any
other people.

A
bby and I moved in
to a beautiful h
ome
, and together we
have built
a wonderful life;
it is
a life of happiness, love, and enjoyment. It
has been an easy road at times
and a bumpy road at others, but I would
n
o
t trade a moment of it for the world.

Since
the
first
day I started writing,
so
long ago,
I
ha
ve
made
extraordinary
improvements in my life.
I took them day by day, and
t
hey were so minor
at times,
it was difficult to actually notice the changes as they happened. However,
looking back over time
evokes a
feeling of
amaze
ment in
m
yself
at what I accomplished
. It
i
s difficult to pinpoint exactly when I felt “whole” again, but it was
at
some point after meeting Abby. With her, the few remaining holes I had left were completely filled in.
The g
uilt, remorse, and sadness
a
re
never completely gone, but they do
n
o
t interfere with my life at all
.
The p
anic attacks,
recurring
nightmares, and fear
, on the other hand
,
they are
gone; none
of them have ever returned
, but I
woul
d be lying if I said I didn’t
absolutely
hate mice
to this
very
day
. I
a
m fairly certain I always will.

I do no
t think Abby realizes it, but
each and
every day I look at her and
realize she is the reason I am who I am.
It just does
n
o
t get any simpler than that.

After I retur
ned from Afghanistan, I built an impenetrable fortress
around myself
,
and
I
blocked out nearly all of my old friends. Very sadly, most of these friendships never really grew back. The time that
passed
,
between the walls I
had
put up
and when
I was ready to take them back down, was enough that most people’s lives had moved on
,
and
they had
gone in very different directions. I tried to rekindle some old friendships on a few occasions, but I think just too much time had passed.

Although the old friendships may have long since expired, I have opened up to new people
,
and
I
have a very close group of friends I have welcomed into my life. Rather than shutting people out, I am welcoming new people in.
Admittedly, it is easier to make friends with people who have been through war or some other similar
experience because
I still have
that
feeling that someone who has been through something like that has an understanding of me that very few ever will.
I suppose t
hat
will never change, and I really do
n
o
t want it to.
With that thought in mind however, I
do
limit the number of friends who have
had
those same experiences so
I don’t
confine myself to just that. It was a mistake I made in the past, to surround myself
only
with “people like me,” thinking it would make things better or somehow easier.
I know I need to be realistic;
that
has
never worked out
very
well
in the past
,
so there is no need to repeat the same behavior again
.

My professional life h
as continued to advance as well, and
I no longer work in the capacity where I was when I was
with the child pornography task force. I
a
m glad I had the opportunity to serve such a noble cause, but I
a
m also glad I will never do that kind of work again. There are some things in life that you can never un-see, and that job was filled with
them
. I will always be grateful that life gave me th
e opportunity to do that
,
because
,
in
an indescribable
way, it helped set me free.