Fear

The following post is my way of trying to deal with something that has been heavy on my mind for the last few weeks. Sorry if it seems self-indulgent or confusing.

My house burned down about a year and a half before I met Erin. For years I have thought that during that time I grew as a person; more responsible, more... real.
As I remember it, in the months following the fire all of my closest friends had abandoned me, I had cut my father out of my life for his callousness in the aftermath of the fire, and Nick was 3 and I was trying to be a good father to him. I pretty clearly remember feeling as though I was alone in my life, but in a good way, not a bad one, and that I was finally having some clarity that had been lacking for years. I remember feeling that. But I also remember being, well... alone.
Then Doris came for Christmas. We had a great time, I was going to come visit her that summer. Then she left. She was pregnant; she wasn't going to have the baby. I supported her in this. I moved in with a roommate, started dating Adrienne, graduated... never made it to Germany that summer; I couldn't (didn't) save the money. I was terrified to go. Summer ended, I broke up with Adrienne, met Laura, ditched Laura, met Erin... and had my 2nd to the last ever phone conversation with Doris, where as I remember it, she asked me to make a clean break with her because it was just too hard to keep going like we had been for all these years. I didn't want to, but I agreed I'd never call her again. Erin and I had been "dating" for maybe 2 weeks at this point.
I loved Doris, and still do, for everything we shared. The last thing I wanted to do was cause her any pain, and so I never called her; I put the letters I had from her in a box and haven't looked at them in the last 8 1/2 years.
About 1 1/2 years ago, as Erin and I were coming back from a hiking trip to Escalante, we were driving in the desert right outside of Mesquite NV when I received a phone call from Doris. I recognized her voice right away, she said she was coming to the US with her husband for X-mas, she'd gotten my # from my stepmother, and she'd like to visit me while she was here. I was losing reception because we were in the desert, but I managed to get her husband's email.
Try to imagine how weird a moment that was for me. On second thought, don't. There's no way you could.
Well, she never called again, and I never received replies to my emails to her husband about their trip. Nothing.
So when I found out about my trip this summer, I really wanted to get in touch with her. I sent another email (no reply) and did a web search for both her maiden and married names, but both were fruitless. So I decided to pull down the box of her letters to get her parent's address and to write her there. As I re-read her last several letters, I had a horrible revelation; things are not as I remember them. Or, more accurately, I haven't thought about those things since then. But when I look at them now, through her eyes, I can see unfolding in my past the picture of a person very, very different from the one I felt I was at the time. I was not who I thought I was, and it's left me wondering if that is still the case.
My biggest fear has always been that I will be the kind of person my father is, and this recent discovery has me very unsettled. I don't want to be the person who wreaks havoc in people's lives but can't or won't see it. I have huge amends to make to Doris, impossible amends, but as much as I loved her, that concern pales in comparison to my fear that I am somehow completely in denial of who I am. I don't think I am, but I didn't then either, and I can see now that I was totally wrong. It is a completely foreign concept to me to feel like I might be deluding myself. I really don't think I am, and I can lay my behavior back then on the fucked up circumstances of my life's events at the time, etc. but that could all just be part of the lie; I have always been a master at deception, especially self-deception, and my huge fear at the moment is that the biggest deception of all has been my telling myself I'm no longer the same guy I was when I walked into AA 18 years ago; that I actually changed. What I don't want to admit is that I never loved Doris the way she deserved. I was too afraid to commit to her and too selfish to let her go, and that's what it ultimately comes down to. And I don't know how I could possibly make amends.

And looking at all of this now, my truly biggest fear is that somehow I'm still no good at love, and that I'm not loving Erin the way the way I think I am. I worry that I am obliviously failing her, not giving her the love she deserves. This thought has been keeping my up lately.
So I AM going to write to Doris, and I hope that I can meet her and somehow make amends. Outside of Nick and Erin, she has been the most important person in my life, and I hope I can do something to make up for how fucked up I was back then.