The trouble with girls.....or is it me?

As a boy, I always wanted to get married.  I loved the idea of being married because I wanted kids.  I wanted a wife too but I don't think I really joined the two together.  Partily because I was scared of girls.  But mustly because I liked girls for a TOTALLY different reason I liked kids.   But it is hard to have one without the other. 

But I often felt that I would probably not have a family.  I never thought I would have a girl who would marry me.  I was ugly.  A nerd.  A reject.  Me talking to a girl would have been amasing.  Atleast intimantly.  So I thought that ultimantly, I would be single all of my life.  My desire was to have someone to love.  A wife, and a kid or two.  I had a few girlfriends through the years of puberty.  Most were because they liked me and voiced their feelings.  My way of dealing with the fear I had, and justifing not facing that fear, was to say that if she really liked me, she would ask me out.  Fact is, I was just too scared. 

As a matter of fact, I remember in high school, a gorl named Michelle and I started talking a bit and then she started dating a guy named Chris.  After that, I was talking to her and she confessed she had a crush on me once.  But, she said I never acted on my feeling and so I missed my chance.  I was dumb.  You se, I had crushes on so many girls in school.  I just never acted on them.  Paula, Michelle, Nikki, Kelly, Rea, Karla, April, Ect.  I could go on and on and on.  One of them, Danyelle, did get my number and called me.  We started dating and were going to get married.  That is a different story.  Key is, she called me first.

Perhaps, the strongest feelings felt towards a girl in high school was Ann (name changed to protect her privacy).  She was the girl I crushed on the hardest and longest.  And we became very close.  We shared private feelings and emotions.  But I never acted on my feelings.  I just loved her.  I was sure even to this day, she never felt the same.  We did "date" once.  For a week.  You know, the whole, "we are going out" thing but never really going out.  She broke up with me because she said, "I was the kind of guy she could fall in love with."  I don't know if I believed her.  Still don't know.  That was the begining of my senior year. 

Funny thing is that we continued to be best friends.  We talked all the time on the phone and even passed a notebook of notes to each other back and forth in school.  I remember that I kissed her once.  It was the sweetest softest kiss I had ever had.  Of course she was the third girl I had kissed.  The first girl almost didn't count since she was very agressive in wanting to kiss me and I did not really like her.  The second was Danyelle and I certainly wanted to!  But with Ann, it happened at a class party at school and never went anywhere.  I still had Danyelle and she had a boyfriend.  We just got too close while dancing.  But I could have acted.  I could have pursued it.  But she had said she just wanted frienship when we broke up.  I respected that.

Now, 20 years after I graduated high school, I am married to the most beautiful woman and have three kids.  Did I ever get over my fear of girls?  No.  They still scare me senseless!  But some how, I had a brief moment of courage, or insanity, and asked my now wife out on a date.  After that, she has made it easy to be myself and not fear her.  I say insanity because I liken that act with jumping of a cliff.  I did it when I kissed "Ann" and when I kissed another girl when I was in the Marines.  I did it when I asked Charity out.  And kept doing it with her because she drew me to do it.  Like that light to a moth.

So is the trouble with girls or is it me?  I would say it is me.  Because I of this I sometimes wonder if any of the girls in my past ever wonder what would have happened if that cute but slightly off nice guy had asked them out.  Or if "Ann" ever wished things were different.  If I had acted on my feeling, I would never had known my wife.  But I would not have cared.  I couyld have gone out with Michelle.  I could have done a lot.  But now, I know.  Now I have a lot.  Now, facing the fear is worth it.