AMT vs. GMD

It's tax season again and I've been taxcrastinating while obsessing about all the things Carlos hasn't done over the years to treat me right. When I threw it out there that he'd have to show up with the ring of Fire & Ice before I leave (the undebatable deadline that's coming at the speed of a freight train) if he wants to visit me in IA after I move, I didn't think he'd do it. Now that I've let him know that I know, I'm thinking the ring is something he's not going to bother with. At any rate, while discussing "the talk" with my best friend (and others) over the weekend, the same question kept coming up: "Would you really want to marry him if he showed up with the ring?"

I told my girlfriend in Tampa, "I'd tell him I'd need 7 days to make a decision, and in that 7 days he'd have to meet my family & I'd have to see his family because both of our families have heard too much negative about the other & I'd need to know that there'd be forgiveness in both families for us to go on in a relationship without conflict." She inquired as to whether I thought that would be enough. I told her the last trip would have to be to a therapist's office for us to work out all the damage we've done over the years. Essentially, I came to the same conclusion in the conversation with my girlfriend in Tampa as I did when I talked to my best friend later that day when she asked, "What would you do if he showed up with the ring?"

I told her I wouldn't marry him but I'd keep the ring and make it into a necklace & earrings as "@$hole tax" for all the $h!t he's put me through over the years. We both got a good laugh out of it, but in retrospect I've decided...I don't want a ring as "@$$hole Minimum Tax" (which is what it would be...the minimum he could do to make up for all the anguish he's caused me since we met). I want "Good Man Dividends" for the love I've given to a man over time and not AMT as payment for all the heartache I've endured while showing too much compassion to an emotionally unavailable (read, retarded) man over the years.

I deserve the best...and accepting AMT when I deserve GMD would be continuing to wear the same low standard that got me in this mess in the first place. By God's grace (and with the faith I have left in God), I pray that there's still a man out there with enough left in his own emotional bank account to invest his love in me and eventually give me the Good Man Dividends I've always deserved.