For the time being, Veronica will be fought with medicine.  If she gets bigger, then the surgeons will go in and take her out.

Stupid Veronica.  I have to carry her in my head for the forseeable future.

 

It is something of a bittersweet day.  Two people I know are being married today(not to each other), and one of them is the man I once thought I would marry.  Was sure I would marry.  We were together seven years…seven years of our lives.  It was the most serious relationship I have ever been in…probably the only one whom I actually loved.  Looking back, the reason for the seriousness and the love was that I lived in New York and he lived in North Carolina, and there were no phone calls, just letters, which meant we stayed out of each others way.  Every relationship I’ve had has broken up because I simply hate having to spend time with someone else.  Selfish?  Not particularly; it’s more that I’m focused on school and career, and I always have been.

But part of me really thought I would be married with a child by the time I was 25.  I hadn’t truly expected that I wouldn’t marry–or even date.  I live in a little town in upstate New York, and there is simply no one here to date.  And it is my choice to live here, and I knew when I made the choice to stay that there would be no boyfriends and precious few friends.  Most people here marry or move in together shortly after high school graduation, and those who go away to college don’t return.  I am one of the very, very few who went away to college and came back.  I am the only one I know of who moved back out of choice and not necessity.  I could have easily made it in Binghamton or Charlotte, I had those choices, and I chose to stay. 

And today, a year or two or three after those choices, I have few regrets. Yes, there are few people here, and even fewer jobs.  And still…still, I know I’ve made the right choice when I’m awakened in the morning by the sound of engines on a paved race track.  When I sit on the rocks on the 4th of July, the waves crashing at my feet, the fireworks shooting off high over the lake.  When I hike through the state park, or stand underneath a waterfall.  This is home, and I’ve chosen to stay. 

We lose something with each choice we make.  I could have been married by now.  But I chose graduate school over marriage; I chose to live in a small town over friends.  We give up something for everything we gain, but sometimes…sometimes I simply hope that what I gain will, eventually, be more than what I have lost.