Two of my close friends are now happily married after some quite "fairy tale" beginnings. One couple met at 18, and after dating for six months, he left her when her mental health issues started impacting on their relationship (or, as he puts it, "she was a neurotic pain in the ass!") and he decided she was just too much to deal with. Two days later he rang her and said "I love you - let's sort out your shit together". She's now heavily pregnant with their fourth child, and although like any relationship, their marriage has had ups and downs, the bond between them is clear. Neither would ever choose to be without the other.
My other friend met her husband to be during university, and spent several months in the "dating but not dating" phase - although there was an obvious click between them, neither asked the other out until he was finally badgered into doing so by their group of friends and the rest, as they say, was history.
Sadly, I've also got some close friends who are still caught up in the "heart wrenching drama" part of their own personal fairy tales...the reality bites. I'm kind of also there myself. The three of us have invested much more than perhaps we should have, in men who aren't sure if they want us. One friend managed to guard her heart well enough that "I'm not in love with him but...I so easily could be. I can't imagine finding someone else that just fits with me like he does". Another is in just as deeply as I, emotionally - for her, he is that one special person, that no-one can replace.
In my case, the investment was...everything - loving someone so deeply and freely, more than I ever have before. I found in him someone for whom I was prepared to fight anything, endure anything, work through anything, just so long as he'd stand beside me. So, I suppose, I shouldn't be surprised that the sight of his back when my neurotic attachment fucked it up has hurt me more than anything ever has. It shocked me that after everything I went through with the geeklings father, this could hurt worse, and yet it has. Because I never gave to him the entirety of myself, a part of my very soul. At 29, for the first time in my life, I fell totally in love.
I'm still hoping and praying for my fairy tale. Hoping there will be a day where he'll ring me, or just turn up on my doorstep, like my friend's husband, and tell me that even though we've both got shit to sort out, he's prepared to do it together, because the thought of losing me hurts him just as much as the sight of his back has wounded me. That he misses my laugh, my smile, in the same aching way I miss his. That he can forgive me for being a neurotic pain in the neck, in the same loving way I can forgive him for turning away from me when it got too hard. That he feels I'm worth sticking with through anything, with the same devotion that my heart has to him.
I guess one day, I'll accept that the silence of my phone and the emptiness of my doorstep, mean he's gone for good. But not today...
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