Undercover Agnostic (Update 18): A Foggy Mind, a Wedding Ring, and Bittersweet Memories.

Sheldon's note: This post is somewhat of a continuation of update 16 in my Undercover Agnostic series, A Long Talk with Rose. If you are not familiar with that post, please read it now before proceeding to read this post, otherwise it will not make sense to you.

This past Sunday, the normal after church conversations were going on, and Rose's father "Jim", said for Rose to show me a picture on her phone. I saw what it was, a wedding band, on what was most definitely her hand. I had so many different emotions then, ranging from confusion, fatigue, bewilderment, happiness, to somewhat of heartbreaking disappointment.

I was already in a fog, and this picture didn't help my confusion any. Not only was I having some bad fatigue from my depression that put me in a mental fog, but I was starting to have the lottery ball effect at the same time, and I have never had both at the same time. I don't know why, because I have been taking my Cymbalta regularly, but sometimes I still have my bad mental health days, where I feel lost and like absolute crap, tired, confused, and like absolute crap. I haven't had days that bad since the Cymbalta, but I guess life happens that way.

I suppose I should start from the beginning on why this caused so many different emotions for me all at once. I have been good friends with both Rose and her now fiance, Sam, since between they ever started their relationship. I have known both of them for at least 10 years. When we were teens, and shortly after high school, I was very close to Rose, and we had a odd and unique friendship.

She kind of startled me at first, with her happy personality, and her insistence in the first few years that I knew her of always wanting to hug me. I did get used to that, and after some time came to enjoy it, which is odd, because I have talked before on the blog about my resistance and discomfort about people touching me in my post, Personal Space Invaders. I can only tolerate anything more than a handshake if it's coming from a close female friend, like Rose, or if I am in a relationship. Not even family can get too close.

Rose liked being affectionate with me, and we spent a lot of time together in those years. When I was about 19, she brought up the idea of us dating. That's when I made one of the worst mistakes of my life, and one I still regret to this day: I shot down the idea. It's not that I didn't care about her (I did), it wasn't that I wasn't attracted to her (I was, and I still find her to be cute), quite frankly it all boiled down to the fact that quite simply, I was a coward.

There, I said it, it's the truth, and it was a very pretty truth to confront about myself. I was too sacred to take that leap. I was scared of what would happen if we would break up, I wondered if we would still be friends, I was afraid to lose her that way, I was afraid of my abusive mother, who  didn't approve of her, since there was not much I could do to break free of her then (this was very shortly after the nervous breakdown that so greatly changed my life in many ways), I was just scared all around.

Though we remained friends, we have never been as close as we were at that time since. She went on to date Sam, and about a year into their relationship, I confessed the way I felt to Rose, just laid it all out. I felt so guilty, like I had betrayed her, since she cared about me so much. She was surprised that I was carrying so much guilt about it, and I believed her when she said that she had forgiven me, but what was done was done, there's not much I could do about it.

Two weeks ago, when Rose told me about the problems with her relationship with Sam, I felt bad for her and Sam both, it almost sounded like they were going to break up. I wanted Sam to change for both his sake and hers, because he wouldn't be able to move on in life if he didn't stand up to his parents, and decide to change his life for the better, and move the relationship forward with Rose.

What I didn't say in that post 2 weeks ago, however, and may the Flying Spaghetti Monster forgive me for thinking this at a time like that, was that though I would be highly disappointed to see them break up, I felt that it could be my chance to do what I was too scared to do 5 years ago, to make things right. It was stupid of me, I know, Rose knows that I am agnostic, and has still accepted me anyway, but I don't even know if that would even work out, a conservative Christian and an agnostic, what a combination, and would she even be willing to go along with it?

Then, just only two weeks later, not only are Sam and Rose engaged, but they haven't said anything about whether Sam is going to stand up to his parents, or where the money came from to get the rings (trying to keep his irresponsible father from losing his house has drove him nearly to the point of bankruptcy), not that it's any of my business anyway, but you can probably understand my confusion now, right? Is this even going to work out for Sam and Rose, or is it going to end in disaster before it even starts? I hope not, maybe I'm too pessimistic, but if this works out, I would be so happy for them, they both have been through quite a bit in their lifetimes, and it makes me happy to see happiness come to people who truly deserve it, because it happens so rarely in this world.

I really don't know what to feel at this point, and I've really been to busy (and broke) to feel anything, really, I've been going broke myself trying to rebuild the house (I'm somewhere about $2,200 in debt to family over that), I lost my trusty old GMC SUV to over $1,200 worth of mechanical problems, and sold it to a friend of my mechanic for parts.

Thankfully, my mom signed over the title to an car she rarely drives anymore to me, to replace it, but even that is coming with headaches, I had to pay over $200 in title costs, and that's with reduced sales tax, because it was a gift from a relative (I hate this greedy state, it keeps demanding more and more money each day, but isn't even properly funding school districts, where is the money going?).

Gaaahhh!!! So many emotions at this time, and not enough time to feel them.