Love. Go figure.
If you’re really lucky and the gods decide to smile on you, there will come a time when you meet someone who will radically alter your life and change you forever.
I hadn’t planned on getting involved with anyone, but who does? I was content.
In retrospect, I might have been letting life live me and not living life. I might have just been existing. I might have-as explained by the grandmother in the film “Parenthood”-been terrified of experiencing the roller coaster of a loving, all-encompassing relationship. Opting for the secure though dull routine of the merry-go-round, I had drifted day-to-day with occasional thoughts that someday I’d find someone worthy of my love.
Well, someday came, and I liked him right away, which is unusual because I don’t like many people right away. He was, in a word, special.
We had our problems, but tenderly we negotiated with each other. And even though he worked out of state and was 13 years younger than I, we threw all caution to the wind and hopped on that roller coaster. We fell in love.
He went through my father’s surgery with me and he helped me out of a bad job, giving me the courage to go out on my own. I helped him sort out some of his problems, loving him as is-something he had never felt before.
What more could I ask for you might wonder? How about a future?
My being 36 leaves me with different wants and dreams than a 23-year-old nomadic consultant with a laptop attached to his hip, happily exploring the world. We now had a problem that wasn’t going to go away, no matter how much we talked or loved each other. My wanting a stable future began to overshadow our times together.
After many honest and emotional discussions we came to the bittersweet conclusion that there was no future for us. He didn’t want to settle down, and I’m in a nesting state. He didn’t want children now or anytime, he said, and I have that biological-clock thing going. In the big picture, we both wanted different things, and as much as we could have kept going as we had, we knew that the longer we prolonged the inevitable, the more it would hurt. After three months of struggle, we ended it.
Well, I miss him. I know 11 months is not a long time in the grand scheme of life, but it’s long enough to hurt.
Yet, I learned so much from him, from us. I learned love doesn’t end just because a relationship does. Feelings are feelings. Sometimes they just take on a different form. I’ve learned that letting go is sometimes really holding on to good things and that goodbye doesn’t always mean it’s over. It’s only goodbye to one part of a relationship.
And when we talk now, which isn’t often, we still say “I love you” before hanging up because we do love each other, only we’ve moved on now to a caring friendship. I now know we’ll always be there for each other. And as much as I hate to admit it, I see that riding that roller coaster was the best thing I ever did for myself. Because what is life if you don’t share it with someone? More important, what is life without feeling?
As I said, if you’re really lucky and the gods smile on you, and if you want to change, someone will show you how.
