A Year Ago This Weekend...

This time last year I made it back to Chicago after trying to re-establish myself in Houston, Texas.

Things didn't work out like I wanted them to.

I just wanted to get on my feet and find a way to fall in love with the new, Southwestern me, but I realized after struggling to find my place, working as an insider in Uncle Tom's Cabin (Shell Oil, damn big oil), and trying to avoid a relationship I wasn't trying to have because I didn't know who I was or what my role was... Was a lot of work.

I broke a promise and never looked back weeks after getting back here to Chicago, but I had no clue I'd be here, right now.

Happy.

And married.

What the fuck? I got married back in December.


I heard the stories. I read the complaints. I heard my name in the mouths of many a brown blogger that I was some man whore, hell bent on screwing at least one third of the female population via my big rig. That I traveled to Houston under false pretenses and broke some young woman's heart when I abruptly left her high and dry... Wow, I wish I could have had the heart to have been half that dude because it seemed like he was having fun.

That dude wasn't me, and I never complained about that. Still ain't gonna'.

I wish I was getting the ass some said I was getting on my escapades. I would have had some great tales of conquest to tell, but... It didn't go down like that for me in Houston, in Salt Lake City or while I was on the road.

I made mistakes in 2007, I was somewhere I wasn't supposed to be and I corrected that mistake a year ago this weekend.

I never knew that the woman who would be my wife would be in Chicago and that we would have the adventures we had that led up to us falling in love and getting married in Vegas. She had been someone that I had flirted with since 2005 and someone I could call friend. All of that friend shit went out of the window when she just so happened to be in Chicago when I was coming off the road. That weekend, those moments and that first kiss...

Yeah, I was sold on dating her from that point, but never did I know that we would be all up in Home Depot a year later looking at paint swatches for the bedrooms and moving furniture into our second living room (it's a compound, I tell ya, just enough space to get away from each other when we ain't in love).

I left Houston pretty much the way I came: confused and directionless. Even though I got an incredible offer of employment that came out of nowhere (because the job I wanted called me at the last minute and told me they didn't want me) I still had no clue what would be in store for me when I got back to Chicago.

The person I had confidence in straight flipped on me and opened up to me after I left and then a few weeks later spoke to the folks investigating me for the job I got in Chicago last year. Did you know that prevented me from getting the security clearance I needed for the job and I lost out on a shitload of salary and bonuses that I was going to use to compensate that person, and I ended up not getting that position and ended up with a lesser paying one and damn near lost that one because I needed that damn security clearance?

I'm not angry about that anymore, but that did cause me to get as angry as I have been since my drinking days in the Army. I even plotted to go back to Texas and confront folks over that but my money was funny and then I decided to break my promise to them and with the help of my brother, best friend and dad I just walked away and left that shit alone.

And a few weeks later I was running around Chicago with... My wife.

And it kept happening. And then we created the patented (pending) Hassan Traveling/Shacking System

Midwest
West Coast
Midwest
West Coast

Labor Day came, and then She was with the fam at Thanksgiving, and we were driving down I-5 to places unknown in Southern Oregon for Sunday Brunch and then days later we were on Michigan Avenue downtown Chicago...

And now a year later and damn near a year married here I am.

In the time that I traveled back to Chicago I thought I was falling back in love with the city because I missed all of the events, people and atmosphere it had to offer but that wasn't it.

I was falling in love with myself.

And then I was able to fall in love with her.

And then we brought it together here in Chicago. She surprised me when she found a job here and said to me: "Let's go home"

I never thought it was possible for me to find myself, find my love and find a home here in this place, all in the span of one year. I thought it was impossible.

Now I know that nothing is impossible.


Husband, Homeowner and Hunter-Gatherer

I never knew that could be me. What a year.