The way we were

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 boyfriend and I have this discussion often. I say that everything happens for a reason. He 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...