Category — flashbacks

I stood in the middle of the bar and took a long sip from my drink, letting the vodka slip down my throat and start a slow, low fire throughout my stress-ravaged body. Just as I felt a month’s worth of tension start to slip out of my toes and fingertips, the General Manager of my sector at the Borg approached.

Are you okay? I know this was a hard day for you, do you want to talk a little? I’d like to know how you’re doing.

We had just executed a mass-layoff in my office, including most of my staff, and my knowledge of this impending doom preceded theirs by a little over a month. I had cried at the prep meeting, while terminating my Payables clerk, and with some coworkers after they were handed their pink slips. I cried all damn day, and only worried a little about my professional reputation.

I’m okay. I meant what I said earlier- this is the right thing for the business, it’s the right thing for those of us who remain- but that doesn’t make it any easier. I know that I’ve been able to look back on my darkest days six weeks, six months, six years down the road and I’ve had the solace of realizing that if I hadn’t faced that hardship, I wouldn’t be right here, and that’s always been a source of comfort to me. To be able to say of the hardest things that they helped make the best things in my life. I’m sad tonight for the people we let go, but more than anything, I just hope that they can look back later on and see that this ending was the beginning of something better.

A relieved smile spread from his eyes to his cheeks, and we chatted for a few minutes before someone cut in and I excused myself.

A few days shy of my thirty-second birthday, I still believe that. I can’t defend it, I can barely explain it, the best hope I have is to point to nature and say it is evidence to me of a higher order that we have not yet grasped in our knowledge of the universe.

If faith is an innate knowing, then this is mine, and I understand it in my bones.

I don’t know why bad things happen to good people, and I don’t know why some lives end so early or so unexpectedly. I understand that people hurt people because they hurt, but I don’t understand the cosmic value in so much pain. Perhaps there isn’t any at all, and I only seek to ascribe it some value to make peace with it somehow.

Since my earliest years of awareness, I’ve been called an old soul. Certainly, I’ve had a few encounters with strangers that were more recognition than introduction, and have always read between the lines without really realizing it. What that means is beyond any of us to understand, and I won’t do it the injustice of pinning it down. Those kinds of things are still magical to those of us that want to see them, and I suppose my biggest question for my coincidence and science friends is, simply:

Why wouldn’t you want to think that things happen for a reason, even if we don’t understand how or why?

I’m incredibly suspicious of anyone who doesn’t believe in something, one thing, anything that they can’t see.

Last night, I sat in the kitchen nook. The steam from my soup kissed my cheeks, and the faint smell of woodsmoke sat in the back of my throat. My thoughts drifted to my upcoming birthday and the annual reconciling of reality against my visions and dreams.

As always, my life looks nothing like what I ever imagined for myself. The people and experiences that filled the gap between my dreams and my defeats are both precious and priceless in their own right, and I choose to believe that they put me right here, right now, with this particular perspective. Any variation on my history would not have produced this moment, with these people, and my capacity to appreciate them.

You can argue with that all you want to, and I would relish the discussion.

What you can’t argue with is the sense of recognition and belonging that strikes deep and true, past my neurotic brain and my poor schizophrenic heart, straight into the marrow. It produces a warm calmness that whispers above all the noise of doubt and fear.

You belong here.

One would think I might realize over the course of nearly thirty-two years that the anticipation is by far more wretched than the battle itself. Facing my photographic past was no different; the process was long and difficult but it restored my perspective. I should have taken that hill years ago.

As I sorted the last several years of my life into digital photo albums, something became obvious.

When my heart breaks, it breaks wide open. Observe:

If this girl had not gotten her heart broken…

this girl wouldn’t have become the girl who took this picture:

lake champlain, burlington, vermont

and if this girl had not gotten her heart broken,

photo credit: citizen-times

she wouldn’t have been around to take this picture:

graveyard fields on the brp

and if this girl hadn’t loved and lost…

she might have never become the girl who took this picture:

lake tahoe, nevada

she struggled a great deal with her next broken heart, but with time and love from family and friends, she became this girl:

who took this picture:

She never would have had a wine-soaked night in the hot tub under the desert stars, she wouldn’t have watched the bobsled races at Mirror Lake, or seen a Red Sox game at Fenway. She certainly would not have ridden a puddle jumper from Boston to Saranac Lake. Never would she have considered moving to Burlington, and met a cherished friend in her research. She wouldn’t have known the joys of perfectly roasted peeps and impromptu champagne-soaked Sundays, never would have rode piggyback in a Catholic schoolgirl costume past the Baptist church as services started. She wouldn’t know and love a family that takes Christmas shots on the back patio of a Hendersonville bar and treats hangovers with shrimp fried rice.

She wouldn’t believe that she deserves coffee in bed and not having to sleep in the airport. She wouldn’t have discovered her capacity to trust again, she wouldn’t have a business website or a pen painstakingly chosen for her hand. She wouldn’t know, on a cellular level, the satisfaction of a joyride, nor the beginning whisper of real love.

This girl had nearly everything she’d ever wanted. She was living her happy ending.

This girl’s future has never been more uncertain; she has none of the security the other girl and ten times the confidence. In believing in you, she learned to believe in herself. Her life is rich and full for all its delicious complication, and her dreams are bigger than any of the other girls ever imagined.

Thank you for giving me a reason to believe.