I think Barbara Streisand said it best. “Memories may be
beautiful and yet what’s too painful to remember we simply choose to forget. So
it’s the laughter we will remember, whenever we remember… the way we were”
I’m sure that’s the way I’d like my autobiography to be
written like. Or anyone else’s. Just the good times. The scattered pictures of the smiles we left behind. But if it were
so, then wouldn’t big chunks of our plots be missing, making it impossible to
just understand why anyone could ever be just happy? In truth, how can you
recognize happiness if you’ve never cringed with sorrow?
My life comes in volumes. Some I’d sell to Hollywood, some
awfully wretched, but nevertheless never, ever, uneventful.
My friend and I have this discussion often. I say that
everything happens for a reason. She says “Some things should just never happen,
they should be completely avoided.” And sure, I’m a sap for a happy ending. But
what is an ending without the tale?
Last weekend, while at a friend’s wedding, we were dancing
and he looks over at the bride and groom and exclaims “He says it only took him
one year to fall in love with her. Ha! It took me 10! We got this babe!!!” and
we both laugh hysterically as we spin into the song. And we dance the night
away.
Love can be like that. Terribly sarcastic. The person you’ve
been dying to meet could be light-years away, maybe a couple oceans over. Or
maybe, just maybe, they’ve been hanging in your room on an old picture board for
the past 10 years and you just never noticed.
Some people come into love so easily, and hey, that’s grand!
But for those of us who have fought and struggled well it really feels like
quite a battle. One you keep losing at. One that keeps draining you and taking
as captive all your closest friends till that party of many becomes a party of
one.
But nonetheless we can lose heart but never hope. We walk
through the haze, hopeful, waiting that one day the fog will be lifted. That
the ground that we walk on will have shifted, and we will see things new and
different. That love somehow will find its way to you. That the tears shed were
spent for a reason. That the heart that broke, will have healed in due season.
And spoiler alert… it does. I promise on everything I hold
dear, it does. I laugh thinking about how my first column ever was titled “What
if prince charming detours?” 10 years later, many tales, and battle scars the
size of Texas, I come to find he did. And though it might have taken an awful
while I’m mighty glad he’s finally, and ever so enchantingly arrived.
It’s late in the evening and he’s sitting on my couch. He
stretches his hand, and I take it. No “if’s”, “but’s”, or “and’s” about it. He
pulls me in, and I fall back into the couch next to him. And from the pocket of
his suit he pulls out an old photo. It’s our first photo, a group picture with
our closest friends, taken on the day that we met.
It’s super blurry. Because it’s so old and it’s completely
out of focus. But 10 years later maybe it attests to the fact that life can be
like that. A little out of focus. A bit blurred. And it doesn’t make sense. Not
for a long while, till time itself teaches you everything has its time and
place. And when you get there, to that moment. Well, that haze… it lifts. And
you see it. There. It’s always been just there...
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