Life Begins (11 page)

She said that she didn't want to lose me that
way. She was going to take advantage of me while I was passed out.
I have always found it odd that she wants to sleep with me so badly
that she would even take me passed out.

We then talked about everything. We talked
about what we wanted out of the other person. We talked about what
we wanted our relationship to be like. It was a real compromise. I
would forgive her all of the hurts of the past. She would forgive
me for everything wrong that I had done that hurt her. We went from
my declaration of independence to a constitution that defined our
relationship and our roles.

~~~

He's not kidding. We actually
drafted a constitution that night. He put in there the reasons that
we could and could not break up. He put a lot of his neurotic
tendencies in there.

For the first few months of our
relationship, we would have report cards. He made us come up with a
list of things that were important for us to have in a mate, and we
would grade each other in these areas. He would then add areas that
he felt insecure about.

This was for the first, second,
and third month anniversaries. We then didn't have one until our
sixth month anniversary. From there it was every six
months.

At first I thought that he was
crazy for doing this, but I actually kind of liked it. We would
have the usual romantic anniversary. He would then spend the night
at my place. We messed around a little on the bed. We then whipped
out the report cards and discussed our relationship.

It gave us a time to discuss stuff
that you don't normally bring up in a relationship for fear of
hurting the other person. And it was nice to hear what he felt
insecure about. And as a woman, I liked being able to have the
freedom to say, "You know I would like it if you would…" And we did
it all with the understanding that it was to make us better as a
couple and to not tear down the other person.

His legalistic tendencies were
actually helpful. As much as they can drive me crazy at times, I
did like this.

~~~

Whatever. I had her in an airtight contract.
We were officially a couple. That was all that mattered to me after
all of the years of fooling around and not being anything more than
friends. We couldn't break up for a stupid reason. Our union would
be based on discussions and what we both agreed on. Nobody would
have a majority control and dictate what we should do. We would
come together and decide everything as a couple. We both had veto
power. We could invoke that power at any time, but we had to
provide our reasons for being against something. We then had
discussions and worked out a compromise.

We worked out lots of deals. If there was
something that I didn't want to do with her, we would compromise.
She would do something with me that she didn't really want to do,
and I would go with her to the thing I didn't want to
do.

Instead of it being a way of keeping track of
whose turn it was to do something that they didn't want to do, it
became a way to spend time with the other person doing something
that they liked and getting to know them better through this
activity. Although we have known each other since we were born,
there is still stuff that I don't know about Christine. And there
is stuff that she doesn't know about me. We learned more about each
other doing this.

It also became a way to avoid fights over
stupid things. There were times when I wanted to hang out with my
friends and just have some guy time. We negotiated it where I could
hang out with my friends. She could hang out with her friends at a
party. While I was hanging out with Arthur and Leopold in one of
their basements, she was a party with all of the popular kids from
school. Where I think this would have made me jealous before, the
constitution made a legal commitment where we were recognized as a
couple.

Our relationship was good enough where I
didn't worry about her cheating on me. She loved me and wasn't
going to be flirting with guys to make me jealous. Our relationship
had changed drastically. We no longer thought of ourselves as
individuals. We were a couple.

~~~

We the People of Jack and
Christine, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish
Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common
defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of
Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish
this Constitution of the United State of Jack and
Christine.

Chapter Six ½

The Truce Comes Back to Bite
Me

My Declaration of Independence was
a logical conclusion for a boy who was emotionally confused on his
relationship status with a woman he would always love. Part of what
confuses me about love is that it is an emotional investment. I
have looked around and seen people fall in love and then just
easily fall out of love. The pain and heartache they felt never
seemed to equal the happiness and pleasure they derived from the
relationship when it was at its best.

I know about investments of the
financial and intellectual type. With education, you learn
knowledge that continues to grow with the more training and facts
that you add to it. You can then use this commodity to help you in
a job and to further your career. And money grows as you add to it
and invest it. It shrinks when you withdraw it or spend
it.

But love and investing in other
people doesn’t seem to have the logical returns that I can
predict.

I looked at my older cousins and
how they would bring their significant other to family functions.
Pictures would be taken, then the next year another person had
replaced the significant other. Pictures still existed as record of
the previous love. I wondered why the change when the appearance of
love seemed to be the same as the picture and as what was in front
of me.

I don’t have an answer for this.
In the emotional turmoil of my youth, I felt it was best to just
count my losses with Christine and terminate the relationship with
an explanation for her and the world as to why I was severing the
ties that had bound us together. I was cutting the emotional
strings for just reasons.

I know I hurt Christine by writing
down a record of everything she had ever done to hurt me. It was
never my intention to hurt her. The emotional yo-yo she had me on
had to come to an end. And whether she likes it or not, I can’t
help but to remember every single moment I have shared with her.
I’m a socially awkward guy that wants to love her and make her
happy. I’ve just always kind of missed the clues and not read the
signals that she was giving me.

This also explains how I could
miss Melinda actually loving me. I had defined the relationship as
friends that would eventually get married because nobody else would
have us. Plus marriage is something that society expects you to
do.

And I hope this explains why I
would write a Constitution with Christine. I wasn’t trying to gain
ownership over her. The autistic boy wanted the relationship
clearly defined by a set of rules and expectations for both parties
in the relationship.

I also did better with the
progress reports for the relationship. I needed to be sat down and
told what I was doing right and what I could improve on. I can love
somebody with all of my heart, but I still needed to have that
communication of how I was doing.

Men often miss the subtleties that
women throw at us. Imagine what it would be like for a guy with
autism. There is a reason one scientist would propose it to be
Extreme Male Brain Syndrome. I miss even more than the majority of
other guys, even if Christine always tells me that I can pick up on
other things that are important that other guys would
miss.

Chapter Seven

Isaiah the Wrong Things

While the constitution did wonders for us as a
couple, it has by no means been perfect. I still screw up. It is my
nature. My biggest screw up came when she wanted a pet name. We
were lying in bed, she looked up lovingly at me and said, "If you
had a pet name for me, what would it be?" I didn't know. So she
asked me to think about her and to say the first thing that entered
my mind. I said, "Israel."

She was not happy. Even after I explained it
to her, she wasn't happy.

Israel came from my understanding of God and
how my relationship with Christine has always been. I think the two
are very similar. It was a natural choice for me. I admit that it
is not exactly romantic in the traditional sense.

Here are my reasons for this.

If you look at the scriptures, it is
essentially a love story between Yahweh and mankind, especially
Israel. The creation story centers around Yahweh creating
everything in the world.

He then makes mankind in His image. This is
something entirely different from the rest of creation. Of all of
the creatures and beings, man is inherently different.

Angels predate man. They were created to
worship Yahweh. Man was created to love Him. Man was given free
will to decide to worship and love Yahweh. If you then take the
creation of Eve into account, you will see how Yahweh knew the
loneliness that Adam felt. Women were created because Yahweh knew
what it felt like to not be loved.

It seems that you can never have love without
jealousy. This is where the fall of man comes in. Satan, or
Lucifer, or any other name that you wish to call him, was the most
beautiful of the angels. He was also probably the closest to
Yahweh. Satan then saw how Yahweh loved this new creation. Jealousy
came into the picture. He then deceived Eve. Eve then got Adam to
fall with her.

I have always found this story one of the most
interesting and important ones of the scriptures. It shows how
Satan wants to keep us away from Yahweh because of the jealousy he
felt over us. It also shows something inherently flawed with man.
We have a desire to be like God.

This is one of the greatest paradoxes of my
faith. While I am supposed to be like God in character, I am not
supposed to desire to be God. How do you become like somebody and
not want to take their place?

After the fall, Yahweh still desired to be
loved. He looked for people who loved Him honestly. I would put the
story of Cain and Abel in that category, too. I find it an odd
story. While Abel's offering was pleasing to God, Cain was jealous.
Mankind was now killing each other to be loved by Yahweh. God
always looks at the heart of the matter. By all accounts, Cain
should have received the first punishment. Instead, he pleaded with
God and told Him that it was too severe of a punishment to be cast
from His presence. He couldn’t live like that. He was allowed to
live with a mark that nobody could touch him. Hell is being
separated from God.

What I came away from in reading the
scriptures is a basic love story. Yahweh created us to love Him of
our own free will. The rest of the scriptures have to do with our
human nature and trying to get that in balance. All of the Law can
be put into three categories based on these principles. Man's
relationship with God. Man's relationship with man. What is best
for mankind to live a long life.

The first two categories are the most
important. They deal with the relationships. The third category is
important to individual's wellbeing. I have a hard time with modern
Christianity because they want to use freedom in Christ to justify
breaking commands that fit into the first two categories. The third
category should only be the one where we have freedom in Christ.
The third category is the one that deals with what to eat and what
to do to become pure. Freedom in Christ means that I can eat
certain foods and not have to sacrifice animals.

I also find modern Christianity very
legalistic on some things. They never look at the heart of the
matter or the reason for God having said something. They are too
busy wanting to judge people on how they think the world should
be.

My biggest annoyance has to do with sex. Sex
was always meant to be enjoyed by people. Look at how mankind is
different from the rest of creation. We are the only creatures that
are always in heat. God created us to have sex so that we can
become one with the person that we are having sex with. It is like
the union that should be taking place between God and
man.

The male and female relationship should be a
mirror of what our relationship should be like with God. That is
another thing that makes me mad about modern Christianity. A lot of
places teach the superiority of men over women and that women
should submit to men.

They will cite examples of Adam listening to
Eve or Abraham listening to Sarah. If these men didn't listen to
their women, these other problems wouldn't have existed. I'm sorry,
but the men made a conscious decision. They knew what God had said
to them. They disobeyed. You can't blame the women. Being a man is
accepting responsibility for yourself. You don't blame the woman
because of your stupidity.

Women should be treated how God thinks about
mankind. God protects us and takes care of us. He puts our
wellbeing first. Women should have influence over their men. Men
should not be so set in their ways that they are above the
influence of a woman. Although there are examples of men listening
to women when they shouldn't have, there are examples of women
giving good advice. And if you look at it, even men were able to
change the mind of God. Abraham and Moses were able to go to God
and get him to change his mind.