Thursday, August 1, 2010

You Just Never Know

Who could have dreamed that life could change so much in just eight short months?  A separation, divorce, a new love, a marriage, no job, a new job, a lost home, a new home, new friends, a new perspective on life and its vulnerability...my vulnerability. You just never know, from day to day, what crazy thing is gonna change it all for you.

My crazy thing was an email.  I sent an email to the boy I loved in 8th grade.  The crazy thing was it was now 36 years later!  He responded and somehow, in two or three days, life started changing.

It was 2009 and I had been in a terrible relationship for 15 years.  I felt unloved, unmotivated, and unable to change anything.  I was working on my novel and had just completed the chapter about my first love, Tracy, way back in 1973.  Every kind of emotion washed over me as I dug deep in my memories and remembered our bittersweet time together. He and I  had our ups and downs but I remembered a gentle and creative boy with the bluest eyes I had ever seen.

So I found his email address through an acquaintance from the old days, who now had a website organizing class reunions for our school.  Her website even had pictures of the last reunion and there he was!  The boy had become a man and he still had that wonderful smile and those beautiful blue eyes! Oh, I thought, I will drop him a line and I did.

All that happened between us in the next few weeks and months can be saved for another post but I will say I was propelled in to the craziest parallel universe I had ever visited. I took the basket of my life and threw it in the air and all the pieces fell to the ground.  Some fell good, some fell bad...