“You make loving fun” might be a lyric from a Fleetwood Mac, song but it could be the anthem for the last eight years of my life…the universe tossed me a Filet Mignon, when really I might have been happy with a Stouffer’s salisbury steak tv dinner!!  I was “done” with relationships, and thought that it would be fine if I was not again ever part of a couple, but then, suddenly, my heart was all aflutter.  When you say “I’m done,” when referring to relationships, you don’t always mean you are done…perhaps you mean that you are done with the months long debacle of gas-lighting that you had recently ended.  Or perhaps you mean you are done with the long term relationship that you ended before that, that was filled with kindness and friendship, but was not the kind of love you had always imagined for yourself or believed you deserved…Perhaps saying “I’m done,” one early summer night, full of woeful contemplation, sitting on your favorite south facing step and counting stars, is really pleading, praying if you will,  “Please universe, show me something…throw me a bone here!”  I sometimes like to think about the spell that the girls make in Practical Magic…I sometimes like to think that I had anything to do with the magic man who came into my life, but really, I don’t think I did anything but hope…

I was done, and to be honest with myself, I had been less than happy for a long time.  For years I wanted someone to look at me like Edward looked at Bella.  For years I wanted someone to help me be the fullest version of myself like Felipe did for Elizabeth.  For years I wanted someone to make me feel like I had found my true match like Mr. Ferrars did to Elinor.  When reading has been a great pleasure of your life, there becomes a strange craving if you will,  for real life to be like something you’ve read…I would sometimes grin while reading and think; if a character exists in these pages, he could exist in real life…magic happened for me, with the spark and butterflies, just like in a love story, where unexpectedly a woman whose soul needs to be unfurled meets a handsome, high-energy drummer, with a smile that lights up her spine and makes her toes tingle, as he arrives for a first date that simply never ends…when hope becomes a love story IS my story, our story, the story…

This handsome and fun musician will tell you that I chickened out three times on planned meetings.  It is harsh to write that I stood him up, but that is what I did, three times, yes I was sorry, but maybe another time…he could have thought me too much trouble but yet, he persisted, and it still makes me smile to think that he did not give up on me, give up on the potential for an ‘us.’  I had said I was done but it seems that I didn’t mean it after all.  This handsome and fun musician will agree that we’ve had our ups and downs, both of us have our share of Mea Culpa moments, but both of us will say that we feel that we’ve created a friendship, and romantic relationship, that is solid, and that the good times have been 99% and the bad times only one…We might very well grow old together, or we might not be together by next July, both things are possible.  We might get to travel in our later years, or I might be run over by a pie wagon this weekend, both things are possible.  Everything we might have ever hoped for is possible.  AND also none of it could happen.  Every day together we hope for another day together tomorrow.  When you do not give up hope, anything is possible.