Second Chance

Over time, the days I've spent with Mike and the memories we have made together created a kind of structure, not unlike a building, with a strong and solid foundation, upon which we built our new life together. The care and tenderness we put into this process ensured that this structure, this love, could withstand the fierce blows of loneliness, separation, stress and much worse. My grandmother once explained to me that surviving a life together meant crossing over mountain after mountain of challenges. Sometimes you would enjoy the valleys together, when things were easy going and the weather would be calm. But then would come a mountain to climb, usually in the fiercest of hurricane winds, and it would be meant to test you. To pull at the cords that bound you together until only strings would be left behind. At times the outlook would seem bleak, but just when you think you could undergo no more, your journey would level out again and the winds would die down. You would recover... slowly building back what had been lost.

Pharmacy school was something like that. I hadn't anticipated another mountain for a while after that beast was done, but hey, when I'm wrong, I'm impressively wrong. I hadn't thought anything could even come close to being as difficult to endure together as those painful years had been.

Impressively wrong, as I said.

After such a long journey with this man I chose from a world of men, after building layer after layer of that structure of love, I find myself at the beginning with him. Stripped, trembling, and reduced to nothing but the raw material. Somehow, through all the horrible, regretful ways in which I was wrong, I was right about one vital thing--we've got the real thing. That magnificent kind of love that people write about, sing about, and long for. For surely only such a love could have somehow survived such a fatal blow, no matter its wounded state. I feel like I'm holding it now, carefully like a piece of old china cracked into a thousand tiny shards, and willing it to knit itself back together. I grieve over the parts of it I've lost--but a long time ago, on a beautiful day in June of 2004, I began with only this raw material, this spark inside me which he created. I love him. The rest of it just doesn't matter.

We left that life behind, and now we start anew. We've both learned things. Only he could tell you all that he has learned. For me, I learned that my confidence in our love for one another was not confidence at all, but all along I had been taking it for granted. I had assumed that we had paid our dues, that I would enjoy a lifetime with him in which we would face many challenges, but not once would we have to face them alone. We had each other. Thinking this way was a horrible mistake. If you love someone, hold on. Make them feel it, always. Never, ever, ever, assume that they can't be taken from you, either by choice or by fate.

Love endures all things. Regarding this, I was not wrong. But it is different now... scarred and raw, withering and small. It will be radiant once again, perhaps with time and constant attention. It is the most precious thing in this world to me. I have invested so much in it--trusted it and treasured it beyond all else. It is worth the agony, the tears, the moments of doubt and the awful loneliness. It lifts you up and makes you better than you were before. Like a chemical reaction, I can never return to what I was before I knew it. I cling to it desperately, because despite it all, I still believe in its power.

We left. We escaped that poisonous place where our love was put to the ultimate test. Now we take the first tremulous steps towards a new beginning--a second chance if you will. This time we'll do it better.

This time we'll do it right.