free stats Carmen's Web: The Talk, part II
Saturday, September 30, 2006
The Talk, part II
I drove with my boyfriend into the city last night so he could get an MRI on his knee. A couple of weeks ago he (thinking he was Jose Reyes) was playing softball and slid to home, injuring his knee. When we got to the office we couldn't find parking so I told him to go in and I'd wait in the car.

After about half an hour I found myself feening for some coffee so I started driving around in the hopes that there'd be a Starbucks around. I drove from 89th all the way to 108 and back to 80th and there was NO Starbucks to be found. There is a a Starbucks on every single block in New York City except when I need one apparently. After a day of fasting and dealing with abrasive adolescents I NEEEEEDED that coffee.

I found a Dunkin Donuts only to discover that I had no cash on me. So I started digging around the car hoping to find some change. What I found, instead, was an old letter sent to the BF by his ex last December. I looked at it for a second and wasn't sure whether to read it or not. I didn't want to invade his privacy but was deathly curious why she would write to him and why he would still have it in his car.

So I read the three page letter in which she told him how much he hurt her for walking away from the relationship and how she hasn't gotten over him. She wrote the letter as a form of "therapy", to get rid of the bad feelings and said she wasn't doing it to make him feel guilty.

I hated reading the letter. I had a severe physical reaction to it (palpitating heart, jittery hands) but was happy at least to read that she referred to me as his "greatest love" (at least I HOPE she was referring to me...).

(Two years ago the BF and I broke up. I had gotten fed up of his emotional constipation. It was the toughest decision I'd made and it broke my heart, but his aloofness made me miserable. A month or so later he started dating someone else and stayed with her for close to a year. Him and I had stopped talking, but when he learned that I was moving to Barcelona we started speaking again. He wanted to see me before I left but I had told him that if he were with someone else it wouldn't be a good idea. So we didn't see each other. A month later he came to visit me in Barcelona and told me that they had broken up.)

Besides reading another woman's words to the man I'm dating, what bothered me about the letter was all its Biblical references. She quoted from the Corinthians et al and it upset me because the BF is a fairly religious man. And comes from a family where everything is shared. I worry that in the future, if we do get married, this will become a problem. I can't share that part of his life with him. I've been to my fair share of churches (I went to Catholic school growing up) and I probably wouldn't mind going to church with him on Sundays if he wanted me to, but I can't give him that type of religion with the "Jesus saves" and all.

I didn't tell him that I read the letter and just went home when he finished his MRI. When I got home I got very frustrated and needed to make sure we were on the same page about our futures. I decided that I wasn't going to tell him about the letter. I didn't want him to think I was snooping and technically he didn't do anything wrong. After all, I was the one he wanted to be with.

So I called him up to continue our talk. I asked him what we were going to do about our futures. He said that I was going to write a best-seller and he was going to retire on the money it brought us. I asked him to get serious and told him we needed to talk about what we would do about our children.

Long conversation short he said he would want them baptized and would like for them to go to church with him every once in a while. I told him that I wouldn't want them getting confirmed or have a communion and after some thought he said that they could do that when they get older, if that's what they want to do.

I can see kids getting confused with that kind of arrangement. Church and mosque, Lent and Ramadan, but wouldn't it be great to be exposed to two different things? I mean, I suppose I'd rather have them have SOME religion rather than no religion. Then they can do what they want with it afterwards.

It's truly confusing in my head. I don't know if it's a good or even right arrangement, but what's the alternative?
Thoughts shared by Carmen at 9:59 AM
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Who: Carmen

Mini-Bio:
xx-something egyptia-yorker who's spent over half her life stuck in two worlds not of her own making. unable and unwilling to fully embrace one identity over the other, she created (is trying to create) her own place in the world where people love each other unconditionally, irrespective of artificial boundaries, and where dancing merengue is as necessary to life as breathing air.

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