Why do I keep checking

Why do I keep looking at my inbox??
I fully didn't expect to hear from Delores at all this weekend and next week. I'm grateful for the messages I have received and hope and hope and hope to hear from her more...but I am realistic; she's surrounded by people that don't like me, and only one knows that I am in her life again (I met her mom once or twice, but don't remember it, never met her dad). She is on vacation and needs it and really shouldn't be trying to communicate with me in that environment.

But it scares me. Completely surrounded by everything that got us here in the first place. I am curious what her mom would think..If she just let it out and told her that she was seeing me again after all these years.

Would her mom drop the blame on my shoulders?? There was a time that she could have done that regarding her daughter's unhappiness, but that was two decades ago. I guess I am part of it now as well, but not intentionally.

I've confessed my sins to Delores; all the crap that I did (or more truthfully, TRIED to do), my awareness that I knew I treated her wrong, a kind of explanation why, but that really doesn't matter. Not now. But I told her. I apologized. And that is what I set out to do.

I didn't intend for this mess to happen. I didn't realize fully, how much I loved her until that day I laid eyes on her after ohhh so long. I had long buried those kinds of feelings. I had been hardened by years of work, and training, combat, loss, pain upon pain. A heart wrenching decision, a shattered life. Funeral upon funeral. More loss.

She melted that shield away immediately. Just with a smile. A shield that I have had my entire life that she was able to penetrate and get into my soul so many years ago. She melted it from the inside.

Maybe I'll describe my childhood one day, but I think that she knows that she affected a boy in a way that carried him into manhood....the man that is now. She still affects him. I can't escape her. She is there everywhere I turn. And I am starting to put that shield up again. I'm starting to close myself off from feelings again. I don't know how this is going to turn out, but it usually is never in my favor and I guess I am going into a kind of "self protect" mode; expecting the blow to fall. I don't want it to, but it could happen.

The worst part is that I put myself here. I knew the risks, I knew perfectly well that my chances were pretty slim, but I guess that's the Jarhead in me; take on the impossible. But I see the long term effects giving up would have on me.

• I would always wonder what if ? What if I had waited? If I wait...I will know.
• I would have quit something important to me. How could I ever tell my kids to stick to something they liked even though it got hard for a period.
• Its a second chance...Not many people get to say that, but I have an honest to God, second chance, to unscrew the one single biggest mistake of my life...letting her get away in the first place.

I could pray and beg and all those other things, but I won't. I used all that up for my son. I know that. If she comes back to me, I know I will never win a lottery; a lifetime of luck will have been used up for me, and it would be worth it.

She is so worth it