The Ottoman

Decades ago, a hole began to form inside of my heart.  It started small, and it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.  I tried to fill it with things that I shouldn't have.  Things everyone but me knew wouldn't work.

Almost 4 years ago, I met a man in a bar, at a Halloween costume party.  I hadn't been out in a while.  I had been spending some time alone, recovering from all of the heart fillers I'd been trying.  I felt nervous stepping back into the bar.  I wasn't sure I was ready.

It started with "I like your costume."  I agreed to a chat.  Then a dance.  Then a phone call, an IM conversation...eventually a "nondate".  I'm not ready to date, yet.  We can go out and have a good time, but just friends.  It's not a date.

The first nondate had us doing homework at my favorite coffee shop, followed by public humiliation via Dance, Dance, Revolution at the arcade, and ending at Blockbuster, where I promised him a movie he would never forget, Death to Smoochy.  Our coffee nondate had lasted 8 hours.

It didn't take long for that hole to feel like it was closing.  I was being completed.  A small fraction at a time, little by little.  With each nondate, the hole got smaller.  I'd come over after his sons were in bed, and we'd watch some bizarre movie I'd chosen, and I'd head home around 11.  My heart was becoming whole again, via popcorn and Jason Statham films.

One night, in the middle of an action film a couple of months into nondating, a small cry came out of the bedroom.
"The little man is awake.  Would you like to meet the baby?"
"Sure."  I wasn't sure.  What if the baby hated me?

The baby didn't hate me.  He came out in his father's arms crying and wanting soothed.  Eric introduced us, and Little Man smiled.  "Beeebaaaaaa".  Eric sat with him on the ottoman, creating a human rocking chair, and rocked the baby back to sleep.

My heart became a little more complete.

That same ottoman is where the hole in my heart completely closed.  I was sitting on it. 

"The ottoman is for feet."

These were the first words ever spoken to me by the Big Man, when he was the tender age of 3.

In 58 days, I will be married into this perfect little family.  The family that made me a person again.