2001-05-17 - 12:23 a.m.

I've got to find it.

Trouble is, I think I might have left it at a bus stop.

Anyway, my plan for tonight and in the morning is to turn the house upside down for it. I have another old passport somewhere I could use for identification -but I can't remember where that is. I might have left it in Atlanta.

Meanwhile . . . My Dad's sister in law came to visit starting today. She really is a sweet woman and very spunky. She smokes cigarettes and gave me a pack of hers today just to be nice. I definitely like her.

She spent all afternoon talking about her husband, my uncle whom I've never met, and how he died a couple of years ago and how much she missed him - how life was never the same - how it was hard for her to go to grocery stores or resteraunts without him after he was gone -how intimately they knew each other and how she missed his presence in her life when he was gone.

What she said resonated with me and I realized: In my heart, I was married to Jim.

Sometimes I don't think people treat my relationship to Jim as if it was that serious. My parents kind of think of him as a college student ex boyfriend, which i guess he is. But we lived together for a year and a half. We were very much in love most of that time. We shared everything. Every day we slept together and showered together and ate together and visited family as family and partied together and grew up together. When Jim went to Huntsville for a few days the March a year after we met it was the first time we'd been apart since we got together and he almost didn't go and called me every night and hurried home days early. Its easy to think back on that time and rember how it ended, but there was a time when we were everything to each other.

And I'll give my standard disclaimer which is the truth that he and I weren't suited for each other and were bound to break up and never discussed marriage and were just kids. But the older I get the more I realize what my relationship with Jim really was and what it really meant for me and my life . . . It was a serious thing.

Likewise, my best girlfriend Larissa is living with him now and she loves him dearly and talks about her relationship with great committment and sincerity - but I don't think the full force of the life they're creating with each other has hit either of them yet. I'm not in their relationship, so I can't speak for them - but I think we got into the habit of thinking of each other as kids, students, college friends, youth, boyfriends and girlfriends--when really there are people all over the world who would consider us quite adult. I'm going to turn 25 in 4 weeks. And if we're adults in that sense then our relationships become more serious. Jim was my husband in a sense - and Larissa and Jim are building a life together - a home, an apartment, and a marriage now. At least that's the way I see it.

When/if I do get married one day - what will I say to my children when I tell them about the time in my life/me and Jim? Will I tell them that their daddy was my husband? Yes. Will I say I've been married before? No. But I will say that I was married in my heart once before, and that is true.