Not a Path, Nor a Choice

A year and half ago, it was beginning to look like I would go on my spiritual journey, and maybe in the process I would figure out a good way to bring my partner and I together, naturally. We do fine apart, which has actually helped us grow gradually and more soundly than most. He has a good job, and asked me to move to Asia to be with him. But, I felt that we needed to somehow seal our relationship that would allow an easier passing of the torch, when I die. Sure, I have a will and trust, but as a married couple it would be more financially wise. Plus he has never got a chance to see my life with no visa.

Continuing as we have while exploring how best to link us easier, like a making a home here in Asia, closer than the U.S. to him. With my brain injury, it is damn near impossible with the damage to speech and tone areas of my brain to facilitate learning a language. Jeez, it took my 5 years to get to the lousy English I speak now, stunted and truncated. I speak like I have been drinking, a lot, and even one time a police officer in my own business accused me of drinking when I called them for a theft. That is another story. So, with this in mind last trip I explored other English speaking places to live. I went home last time here, unsettled with no clear answer what or where to go next. I felt a couple of times I acted out my frustration of no clear answer. My spiritual path was a turning into a kind of avoidance in some ways.

While home I did another 10-day Vipassana last May, and upon completion the news was coming out that gay marriage was winning in the courts. DOMA was struck down, and Bill Clinton is still trying redeeming himself of his connection to this discriminatory law. I worked on this for over 20 years, protesting, writing emails, joining campaigns…and here it was.

There was a now a choice, and now I can chose to run with it or not.  The decision to marry would take my original intention further to a new level of giving my partner more opportunities. Because he has shined with everything, when I have helped ...and been very appreciative. It was never a hand out, it was more like a hand up. And beneath all my flaws, he saw a good heart.  If I did not marry him, and chose my own spiritual path over him, than I have not learned anything at all. The choosing mirage was disappearing.

My mother gives all for her children, and if I take after her, I should at give all to my partner. So, I hired a lawyer and got on with a fiancé visa, a month after the news. All along the process, I have given him an out, and still do if this is not for him, but at least he can try life in my house. It was a year’s process and it was never easy, and at the last minute they asked for another document.

It will be huge change for him and at times, he acted like it was not serious. Which would confuse me. It seemed now… looking back, his background of being abandoned by his parents at birth, made him able to cope with life’s drive-by's by not putting it all in one basket, so if his visa passed... he would prepare mentally, then. He thought it would never happen, so he postponed any feelings attached. Now, that it is concrete, and his ticket booked, and marriage planned he has relaxed being while being excited. We get to experience a whole new level of appreciation of each other, even after 13 years. Naturally bonded. To think we talked about this for years and exchanged rings in 2008. Now, I am only scared of crying at my own wedding.