I've made my bed, now I must lie in it

Let me begin by saying that everyone, including my ever supporting parents wondered what the hell I was doing. "Really," they asked, "can you really be that lonely?" The answer was yes. I got back together with him and we were on and off for awhile. We broke up and got back together three times, including the first one at the beginning of that summer.
My Scottish guy and I continued to send packages, and write letters, but there seemed to be a constant unspoken strain, or maybe that thought just helped me sleep at night. For my 20th birthday, he sent me a picture of himself, (not vain, cute), in a kilt. It was preserved inside a talking picture frame where he had recorded himself saying, in a rogue Scottish accent, "Hi Shanna. I'm sorry I can't be with you on your birthday. I love you. Happy birthday." My mom, who knew the second she met him on that Memphis, October night, that he was the one, gave my Scottish guy a place of honor on the mantle above the fireplace in the midst of senior pictures and graduations. Imagine having to explain that to your on again off again boyfriend who wasn't even framed anywhere in the house. Now, he was a good guy and my parents liked him, I think, but deep down they knew he just wasn't the one, and if they had pushed that on me, I would have run off and married him, so they kept quiet and only talked about it amongst themselves.
Eventually my Mississippi youth minister proposed to me and I said yes. I know, I know... I wasn't in love with him, and no offense if he happens to be reading this, but I still stand by the theory that I was somehow brainwashed. The college we attended was small, rural, and a haven for men like him to find wives, and girls not like me to find husbands, just like their daddies. I was not one of those girls and this was not going to be a happily ever after.
A couple of months before he popped the question, my Scottish guy had planned a trip to Memphis at the beginning of August. He was not going to stay with me, but we were definitely going to hang out. What to do? Well, I was working at the theatre the summer after my sophomore year, and all anyone could talk about was my pending marriage. Or, in many cases my pending divorce. The proposal had happened at the beginning of July, and I still had three weeks before my teaching ended, and four weeks before my Scottish guy came to visit. One day while I was teaching, my sweet friend who had been to Scotland with me the previous summer came up to me while I was on my break.
"Have you told him yet," she asked so sweetly that I knew she wasn't being malicious. "If you're really in love, he'll understand, but make sure."
I was amazed at the knowledge that came from a sweet, sixteen year old kid. She was right, I should tell him... or looking back now, maybe that wasn't what she was saying at all. Perhaps, what she meant was "Please don't get married. You're not in love with him. You are in love with your Scottish guy." I am still shocked that a sixteen year old knew something, that I would be trying for years to make better. So, me being me, and not willing to back down just yet from a bad decision that I was standing by because it was mine and mine alone, I decided to tell him, and that is a story of its own, so once again I must leave you biting your nails and hoping that I didn't actually get married to the Mississippi man.