The other night, a friend asked me if I thought it was possible to be happy while waiting for Prince Charming to show up, bang down the door, and whisk me up in his arms:
Gee, he looks about fifteen…that might be a problem.
This certain friend of mine, who is absolutely lovely, is, a little lovelorn at the moment. We’ve all been there. When the last person to walk out the proverbial door seemed like he (or she, as the case may be) was (okay, almost) everything you’ve ever wanted, the temptation is to brood a bit. To dwell on it. If only…
If only I had a nickel for every time I’ve sighed and thought if only, I would be able to afford a much nicer apartment.
My if onlys started right around the time I turned eighteen. That was the first time I got my heart properly broken into a billion tiny glittering pieces. I was a traditional if onlyer back then, and it took me about a year and a half and the most awful trip to Italy in the history of tourism (that story I’ll save for another time) to realize that I was better off as I was: single.
Alone, alive, alert, AMAZING!
Now, if you’ve been reading these posts, you probably realize by now that I’m not the world’s least romantic person. So it’s not as though I’m completely unenthusiastic about sonnets, or Italy. Or princes [note: princes must be much older than fifteen to inspire enthusiasm]. What I mean to say is that the time I spend sighing and piddling around my apartment waiting for my life to start is significantly diminished. Okay, maybe I have a few weak Sunday mornings, when I’m alone in the apartment and there’s no one to go to brunch with. Maybe those days I have a few pigeon-toed, wistful moments while I’m waiting for my tea to brew.
I know he’ll show up someday…but if it were today, that would be awesome.
But these moments have not commandeered my whole life, thank God for that.
Things are hard to appreciate when they’re right in front of your face. There’s a reason that Joni Mitchell is popular. This poor lovelorn friend of mine is getting over her first…serious involvement with a guy. I won’t call it love. But anyway, poor thing, there’s no end in sight. Maybe the first time is always like that.
I recently reread some of the journal I kept during my first epic heartbreak. I was the lovesickest puppy in town. Man oh man did I have it bad. I recorded dozens of bright, hopeful moments between us, things that haunted me, things that I couldn’t get over. And I relived them. And obsessed about them. For like, ever. Mind you, most of these delightful things happened during the first two weeks of the relationship. Those were the happy times. First date and all that jazz. Throw in some angsty folk music, a few springtime hikes and a sunset dinner in a tiny French restaurant, and almost any girl will fall for the nearest reasonably attractive single male. Alas, I was not the exception. These loverly things were followed by an awkward summer, an insecure fall, and a miserable, miserably long winter. And still it didn’t occur to me that maybe this guy wasn’t Prince Charming disguised in a pair of stripey overalls.
What. An. Idiot.
I pity my eighteen-year-old self. Wretched girl! I wasted all that time pining for some narcissistic fool who couldn’t go a whole hour without insulting me. But that was the best I’d had it, so I thought it was the best there was. I’m convinced that this is the misfortune of first love. It’s all fun and games until someone can’t let go. And someone always can’t let go.
This friend of mine is having some trouble letting go. It doesn’t matter that it didn’t work out and we can tick off several reasons for that on our reasonable fingers. The vacuum of flattery is consuming her attention. Meanwhile, she and I drive around belting out happy love songs in my car, make each other very tasty tea every morning, and carefully dissect our days together before retiring. We model our best dresses for each other, share perfumes, read each other favorite pieces of literature, pray together, eat together, study together, dream together. Last night, we sang along to a Disney ballad (and no I will NOT give you the satisfaction of knowing which one) and spun giggling circles in my living room. And yes, I was wearing a smashing cocktail dress and stiletto heels at the time. The point is this: while she’s yearning for her lost admirer, life is happening. And life is good.
Beautiful friendships are under-appreciated. I wish I had paid more attention to mine, when I was eighteen and stupidly, stupidly in love. My friends had a lot more to offer me, and I brazenly ignored the fact that I was much, much happier with them than I was with my overall-clad chap. I had a friend whose entire room was plastered in Absolut ads (each one different, mind you). She called me “Mang” for a forgotten reason and had a penchant for burritos and Simon & Garfunkel. She wore all black the day the last episode of Seinfeld aired. I can’t remember a single afternoon we spent together that I didn’t laugh so hard that I couldn’t stand up. Another friend of mine used to run through giant leaf piles with me in the fall, would dance to any Shania Twain with me, and never made me feel anything less than a fascinating person. We used to go for long drives. I could spend any amount of time with her and never get sick of her. We never, ever fought. I had the kind of mythical good friends that exist in movies, or Nickelodeon sitcoms. And yet I managed to let a bad relationship get me down – and keep me down. Why didn’t I ask the same of him that I enjoyed with them? I don’t know why I didn’t hold the happiness bar higher. I would have been better off if I had.
Friends take us as we are. It’s not complicated. I love my friends, and it’s not hard to love them. They seem to love me back, and they don’t act like it’s a chore. But finding a romantic attachment of this nature is rare. It’s the Bigfoot of relationships; it’s out there, but the images we have are so grainy and overexposed that no one believes the witnesses.
But it could be a bad relationship in disguise!
Everybody says that you’re better off single than in a bad relationship, but for some reason this is hard to ingest. I don’t know if it’s the ego-stroking that comes hitched to romantic attachments, or the feeling of being wanted, or what. I’ve had some pretty legendarily bad romances by now, and the truth of this has finally (thank God, thank God!) wiggled its way into my head. And I’m happy. Happy! Imagine that. I’m happy not to be under the boot heel of a less-than-generous man, and happy to be busy making myself the sort of girl that the sort of guy I’d dig would like to sweep off her feet. (How’s that for a garbled sentence?)
Of course I won’t object if Prince Charming shows up. Unless he’s fifteen, in which case I will slam the door in his face. But until the day the non-jailbait, non-cartoon version comes a-knockin’, there’s plenty to enjoy. Including the fact that I’m not too busy pining after some overalls to hear the door.
