Heather
Oct 10
I believe that the universe rarely provides us with what we want but it always provides us with what we need. A certain balance of light and dark that creates enough contrast to eventually develop a complete picture. I also believe that we experience the dark only as a catalyst for us to usher in more light. In the midst of tragedy we find beauty and strength. Though I can look back on my most blissful memories and smile, it is the devastatingly painful ones, the darkest periods of my short history that fill me with gratitude. Joy warms your heart but adversity shapes your character.
Two and a half years ago my life and my reality were shaken to their core. The man I was married to revealed himself to be a liar and a cheat. If trust were the foundation upon which we built the structure of our marriage, then in a single moment, with the utterance of a single phrase, the glistening edifice that symbolized our commitment suddenly became a dilapidated shack crumbling into the ground. He was not who I thought he was. He was not who he had TOLD me he was. He had lied. He had manipulated me. He had used me. How could this have happened? I couldn’t even look at him. Nothing about him was recognizable anymore. Scarier, however, was that after I walked away, I realized I no longer recognized myself.
Nearly jobless, nearly friendless, my existence had become mediocre at best. I had invested all of my time, all of my energy into this one person, into this one relationship. He had used it all up and it wasn’t good enough anymore. He had used me up. I felt him suck away the effervescence of my life force with little regard and leave my emaciated corpse withering in its place. I had been broken.
Having invested all of my time into this one scoundrel, I had, along the years, unknowingly relinquished all female companionship. Months before the proverbial shit and fan made contact I had felt a longing from deep within my being for a social life consisting of more estrogen. Long gone were the days of claiming anyone as my “best friend,” so I sent a message into the void. For months I fell asleep hoping the universe would bring female friendship back into my life. Then one day the life I knew fell apart.
Not having a girlfriend to confide in when my wedded bliss turned sour, I reached out, via a facebook message, of all things, to a recent reconnection I had made in a childhood friend. She actually popped up on messenger first asking me something as innocuous as “How’s it going?”
“Good. I think I’m getting divorced.”
Heather and I had always been on-again-off-again friends. Our parents’ houses resided on perpendicular streets that met at a juncture on the path to our junior high school. Of course we were friends. It was convenient. Back in those days we shared little more than our common ambition to be first chair in the flute section of seventh grade band. However, fourteen years later, as I sat next to her on her living room sofa, calmly recalling the previous four weeks of my life and my decision to end my marriage, I found a deep connection in her. We talked. I talked a lot. She listened. It got late.
Later that week I cried and she listened to incoherent babbling through sobs. We talked more. We met again for drinks. We met for food. We met for more drinks. One day we met at “our restaurant.” We traveled. We explored. We talked more. We talked over the dialogue of movies that we “loved” but never paid attention to. I discovered that life and the passing years had reshaped our ideas, manners, belief systems and personal paradigms not into anything similar but into something very compatible. I felt at this point that I had rediscovered something precious and previously overlooked. Why was it now, at age twenty-six, that I had reconnected with this amazing person whom I had known since I was twelve? Then I realized I had a best friend.
I HAVE a best friend. An incredible best friend. I have the very best friend anyone could ever ask for. In one of the darkest periods of my life she showed up, a bright beacon of hope and healing. I am eternally grateful. Thank you Heather for coming back into my life exactly when I needed you. Thank you for being the amazing person that you are. You are kind, strong, intelligent, educated, and beautiful. You inspire me and because of you I strive to be a better human being. I wouldn’t be the person I am today if you hadn’t been there, right by my side, for these last two and a half years. So, today on your big three-oh birthday, I just want to say THANK YOU.
Oh, and HAPPY BIRTHDAY!
