Wednesday, November 9, 2011

And it is the love that comes on the eve of her destruction that somehow saved them both

She finds herself pondering life again, as if she needs to figure it out to give it the right meaning, when maybe the truth is that the meaning lies in her inability to decipher it.  Maybe this part of life, this happy part, the part that makes her smile more often than she has in a long time, or allows the smile to stand unmarred for longer than ever before in her life, does not need an explanation.  She has been plagued by bad luck and even worse decisions for as long as she can remember.  And it is when she is on the verge of unveiling a massive deception that could have torn her world down that she found someone that made her question whether any of that mattered in the first place.  The fact that she is still standing right now is amazing to her.  So maybe she needs to go back to the beginning, retell this story, since really she isn't quite sure what her life story is anymore.

Many years ago there was a girl.  She was pretty ordinary in most respects.  Her hair was too curly, she was pretty awkward, and wasn't even sure what makeup was or what dating boys meant.  She hadn't ever kissed a boy, or even held one's hand.  But she had lost her father.  She was the broken little girl that was quite lost in her world.  She retreated into herself and into her writing, trusting that what she believed about life was true.  She believed that her father had been sick, that he had some terrible brain disease that stole the best man this world had ever allowed to live.  She believed that her stepmother had moved heaven and earth to keep him with them for as long as she had.  She believed that her own mother had deceived her, had tried to keep her from knowing the truth even though she knew she could handle it.  The truth was, that whatever the truth may be it never left the lips of that woman.

Eleven years later she sits asking herself if it matters.  Does it matter if her father died the way that she always took for granted was the truth?  You see this girl always valued truth.  Above all else, the lies were the things that hurt the most.  It drastically changed the relationship she built with her mother when she was convinced that she had intended to lie to her, to protect her from her father's disease.  In reality her stepmother was keeping everyone that cared about her father from knowing what was going on with his health.  It seems entirely likely now, in hindsight and much too late, that he did not die of an illusory brain disease.  He was either poisoned or misdiagnosed.  Either way someone is at fault.  Someone killed my father.

And here we go away from the story and into the heart of what this really is.  Someone killed MY father.  The best man that I have ever known, one that was not free of faults or bad decisions.  He was just a man, not superman or anyone that would have saved the world, but he was a good man.  The kind that few meet and even fewer get to know for who he truly is.  He may not have saved the world, but somehow even though I only had thirteen years with him, he saved me.  He saved me from a life that I could have had, simply by being who he was and showing me that it was important to be that way.  So it's hard to wonder if his death is important, when it is blaringly obvious that it is.  Even if no one else cares but me, his death is important.  Just as important eleven years later, as it was the day my mother broke the news.

I see past the lies now.  I see that even though I may never know if my stepmother did something to cause my father's death that she was not the person that I believed her to be.  Deep down in my heart there are bitter and disgusting feelings.  Feelings that make me want revenge.  I want to take something that means as much to her as what she took from me.  But even when I say that I think I know that I don't even mean that she took my father from me.  I mean that she took my peace of mind.  She took that part of me that doesn't question anything, that just trusts blindly because I will never ever trust like that again.

And yet here I am.  Waiting for a boy that makes this not hurt nearly as much as it should.  A boy that doesn't even know that I have lost a father, or that I'm damaged goods.  A boy that can make me smile without even saying anything.  It's like the world knew that I needed him, and that sounds completely insane.  Since the day that I met this guy I saw something in him that I have seen in very few human beings.  I saw something that I could not place, something that reminded me of something, of someone, of sometime.  And it wasn't until today that I realized what that was.  Every girl is destined to want someone like her father, and I think that's what I found in him.  I don't even know him yet, but I feel like I can see it in his eyes, tucked back in there way past where any normal person could see.  It is there and I know it.

So this life, that has forever been working against me, gave me him on the eve of my possible destruction.  I have no doubt that if I had not met him that I may have crumbled on the cusp of this.  But somehow whenever I look into his eyes nothing matters anymore.  The deception does not matter, the want for revenge is nearly nonexistant, and I revel in the fact that I now have this person in my life that could turn it all around.

He saved me, or maybe more precisely, the world saved us both.  There must be a reason that we met that day, that we didn't choose to delay for even another minute.  That's all it would have taken.  And when I look at it that way it is even more wondrous.  Fate.  Destiny.  I never believed in those things.  They were fairytales and bullshit.  But now, after eleven years... I'm a believer again.  He's made me believe in something, made me want to believe in him.  And for the first time in my life, I'm not scared. 

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