December 14th, 2013 - Jesse Bradley-Amore
You propose marriage for the second time and she says yes. You do this because you think she’s the right person to grow old with and have a family, to be part of the kind of family you’ve never had but always wanted, a family that loves and helps each other without strings attached.
You propose marriage for the second time because there’s been so many good things that have happened since you started dating her. You got promoted at work 2 days after you got together. Your second book is coming out soon. You finally rescue yourself from the haunted mansion that was the apartment you lived in with your first ex-wife. You believe in luck more than any god and she being in your life is causation for all this good luck, not correlation.
You propose marriage for the second time, even though you both wave red flags. She’s a dog owner. You’re a cat owner. You're her first serious relationship. She doesn’t understand why you still have wounds from your first divorce; time doesn’t heal shit. It just makes the scars harder to see in the mirror.
You propose marriage for the second time because you’re a romantic. You believe the right kind of love can overcome everything, that you can finally be the good husband you weren’t during your first marriage. Making someone happy makes you happy. Being the person that someone you love turns to when things get hard makes you happy. Taking care of who you love while they’re sick makes you happy. But all she wants are words and poems, not actions. And you both stay because you think you can change the other to be the partner you each want, until you change for her to save the marriage and she doesn’t meet you even halfway.
You’re married now, for a third time. If your love story had a title, it would be Love In The Time of the Pandemic. Her 2 black cats adopted you into their glaring. You and her combine your names because you’re all in for each other. Sometimes, you apologize for taking so long to find her and she says: it’s ok. You found me when you were supposed to.
Jesse Bradley-Amore’s comics have appeared in The Gutter and Identity Theory. His gay romance novella, Soup Slut, is forthcoming through WhiskeyTit Books. Follow him on Instagram @questionabledecisioncomics.
He encourages you to check out the Zebra Coalition, which assists lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and all youth facing homelessness, bullying, isolation from their families, and physical, sexual and drug abuse.