Be grateful for everything. Even the tears and the heart-wrenching, soul-crushing moments. They are all a part of our history. I used to regret having allowed myself to enter a recent situation that left me devastated and torn. I used to beat myself up over not having had the clarity to come out of it alive when I still had that life in me. But then one of my friends said something that rang a little bell of truth in me- regardless of the outcome, regardless of the person being or not deserving of it, what you feel is beautiful. What you feel is noble. It is one of the noblest things you can feel for anyone and it comes from the highest part of yourself. I loved. I was capable, I am capable of loving. Wholly. Truthfully. Grandly. This is nothing short of amazing. I do not regret, not for one second, one single instant of my tragic love story. Just because it was a love story. Just because despite everything I can still look back and look at that person who treated me so unfairly and hurt me so miserably and I can still find the highest of feelings for them. All I keep, despite the odds, despite the evident train wreck, is the warmth, the tenderness, the not-altogether-unpleasant feeling of wanting to squeeze the life out of him just for being so adorable. This is what I choose to remember. This is what I choose to keep. The way he was standing waiting for me on our first date. The way his hair curled softly from under his wooly hat. The way he was uncomfortable and standoffish around me and didn’t know what to do with his hands so kept shoving them in his pockets. The lanky way he walked. The way he grunted. His husky voice. The way he said I won the game and I’m thinking of you. His skin. The way he smelled of soap and fresh laundry and sweat and mud and grass in his windbreaker and shorts. His smile was perfect. He filled me in every way. Except when he didn’t. Except when the times that he didn’t started being more frequent than the times that he did. Except when he disappeared and I never heard from him again except for a nasty anger-filled email that came from a place that I did not know in him.
But this is not what I keep. What I keep is the memory of the person who I still defend, who I still talk about with a twinkle in my eye, who I still admit , confess, half-ashamed, half-not, to owning my heart and think “I hope one day you realize you still love me and want me back”. What I keep is this knowledge that, when said aloud, makes my friends look alarmingly at each other and down a glass of tequila in one sitting.