If I am remembering correctly, the last time I opened my little blog and sat down to write, I was at the precipice of turning 40 and mourning the loss of my youth.
It’s now nine years (and change) later, and I’m having much different thoughts and feelings about life and, yes, love.
When I last blogged, I believed I’d live to be at least 90, that I had time to continue to grow in my career, and that my husband and I would someday celebrate 30, 40, 50 years of marriage.
However, I simultaneously – and emphatically – also believed love didn’t really exist.
to understand my reasoning behind this, you would have to understand that my dad (who died less than a year after I published my last blog post) was a “functioning” alcoholic. He owned a successful small business and multiple homes and was a self-made millionaire, but he drank a bottle of whisky every night, was a hoarder and a serial cheater, was verbally and emotionally abusive to his wife and, when we were little (up to age 14) beat his kids.
I married young to escape that environment, and build a family, which is something I never quite managed to do in my life (alcoholic family dynamics mean no one has healthy relationships within the family unit).
It seemed to work for a short time. I had kind, loving in-laws when I was 21. Unfortunately, my first marriage lasted exactly two years.
The second? We didn’t make it 20. I got the house and the cats and he is, at 59, engaged to a woman half his age who lives in the Philippines. He tells our now 19-year-old son, “NEVER date American women”.
I had learned over the years that he had stuff going on in the background, with plans to give me the heave-ho for many years (would later explain the lack of hugging, kissing, handholding and emotional support in our marriage).
So I think I can be forgiven for believing love is a myth.
However, with the start of the pandemic, something downright mystical happened.
Three weeks into quarantine, I quite unexpectedly fell hard and fast for a guy.
Not just a guy… a guy who looks like a catalog model, can run an under-9 minute mile (and then beat the shit out of an opponent with an epee that same evening), has a mind like a server with multiple petabytes worth of programs running simultaneously, and is gentle and kind and… loving. Genuinely. With a loving, kind and accepting family to boot.
I finally, at 48, have some semblance of s tight-knit and caring family.
My mom, who is now 72, after a rough few years has been thriving in widowhood and finally quit smoking for the fist time in 55 years last summer after breaking her hip (while ironically rushing out the door late at night to buy cigarettes). Our relationship is closer than ever, and she has also recently taken up art. She found love at long last too.
So I do believe now that love exists. It’s rare but it’s out there.
However, I also no longer believe I’m going to make it to age 90. I’ve had a premonition for a while now that I may not see 50.
This is not purely fatalism: at the beginning of 2021, I developed severe food-borne illness which over three course of a month developed into what we now think was mild sepsis. I ran a fever of 104°F, I woke up every morning at three in severe pain, watched as a painful purple rash broke out all over my body, my hair fell out in clumps, my fingernails turned brown and began lifting from the nail beds, and I spent much of that month in bed.
I survived… For now. So far in 2022, I have walked away from a car accident, at the end of which I wound up trapped in the vehicle (which was totaled), and a week later sustained a severely broken wrist, which required surgery to fix.
None of us of course know how much time we have. Just in case these aren’t isolated incidents and I am sliding into home base in the game of life, I wanted to be sure I found the time while I’m still here to express my gratitude for what life unexpectedly and finally brought to me at a time when it seemed all was lost… love, acceptance, a purpose. Perhaps me being here meant something to someone after all.
Personal Essays 