"Cathedral" by Raymond Carver

A few months after I separated from my ex-husband I met my current boyfriend. I know it all seems a little quick but it wasn’t. I separated from my ex-husband in March of 2008, it wasn’t an easy separation in the least but I was determined to get through it. In June my friend and I were learning about the fun of texting. She had known Tracy for many years through her husband who grew up with him. Well we were playing around and she had decided to play a joke on Tracy by pretending she was an ex-girlfriend of his or something of the sort. As we sat in her van waiting for her daughter to get out of bible school, she decided to go ahead and tell him that it was her texting not some girl from his past. Some how during the conversation I ended up on the phone with him, which was one of the oddest conversations I have ever had. Looking back it was really funny actually but at the time I was shocked and embarrassed by the whole conversation with him.

            Later on he told my friend that he would like to talk to me again but I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to talk to him again. I asked my friend what she thought about it and she told me that he was not really boyfriend material and that he was not much of a steady dater either. This had me feeling wary of him even more. So, I got on MySpace where I found him and sent him a friend request. He accepted and we began to talk a little from time to time nothing serious. As we began to talk more and more I started to figure out that he was not as bad as I had first thought. That he had thought that I was part of some joke that the guys from the fire department he is a member of was behind our conversation.

            Soon we were talking almost every day and I eventually gave him my phone number. He and I talked often and he wanted to meet face to face but I was still wary of him. After all I had just ended one bad relationship, I wasn’t about to start another so I kept putting him off. I really started to like talking to him and so I decided that it was time to meet him face to face. My friend and I met him in the parking lot of our local grocery store, to me that was the safest place to do it. We talked for a while until he had to go back to work. Later on that evening I went and seen him again this time it was more relaxed but my friend was with me so I felt safer.

            A few weeks went by before I saw him again. My friend and I decided to go out so she asked him if he wanted to come along and he agreed so we all went. It was raining that night but we still had fun. Tracy and I talked for hours and I was surprised by how easy it was to talk to him and how comfortable I was with him. That night I learned that I really hadn’t given him a chance to show me who he really was. That I had assumed the worse because of something I was told and one mistaken conversation.

            He asked me if I wanted to go out again the next night, just him and me. I accepted and we have been together ever since. We have been together almost 3 years now. Not only was I wrong about him but so was my friend who had known him a lot longer than I had. I have learned that you can’t always go by what others may believe about someone or base someone on a one time thing because it does not necessarily represent who that person really is.