Hopeless Romance

Epilogue

Fifteen Years have flown by.  I can’t believe how the older you are the faster it seems the days come and go.

I know my story isn’t your typical love story.  My world is not typical.  It isn’t the world where people live eighty years and celebrate fifty year anniversaries.  The only people in my whole life I knew that did that were Sophia’s parents.  Maybe in this new world, in the REV world where people live only a short time, where you lose your love, the one you thought of as “the true one, the only one”, it is possible to fall in love more than once in a life time.  Or, perhaps it was always this way for some people, people with certain back grounds or wiring. 

One of my true loves was my opposite.  May made me grow, try new things, explore past my comfort levels, see things in an all new ways through her very different lenses.  She was inspiring.  She made me a better person, added to who I was. Had she lived, I’m certain we would have happily spent our lives together.

My other true love, Sophia, was so similar to me I fought against her the way I fight against accepting myself completely.  There are things about her that remind me of myself, make me see myself more clearly.  Sometimes that brings me joy, sometimes despair.  She’s also made me grow, challenging me to accept myself and change what I couldn’t accept.  We were always completely, honestly, ourselves together. Occasionally that meant our differing opinions or needs collided, crashed, blew up into heated arguments.  Yet, usually it didn’t.  Usually, I felt we were so similar, we really got each other in a way May and I never did.  Sophia would say something and inside I would feel, happily exclaim “See!  She gets it!” Things I had to explain and or debate with May I felt Sophia validated and accepted naturally.   Sophia’s acceptance made me more comfortable with myself.

I was connected to both in ways I still don’t understand.  I’d be thinking of Sophia, and she was suddenly there because she was thinking of me at the same time.  Or, the times with May when I sensed she was in danger or dying. 

There’s a lot about love I still don’t understand.  When I was with May I thought true love had to be with an opposite; with Sophia I really believed nothing was better than someone totally on the same wave length. 

I do understand that love is beautiful, and I follow it now, accept it where ever I find it.  There are so many forms of love.  Love is abundant all around you, if you notice it.  I love a certain flower, it loves me by giving me its beauty.  I love my kids and they love me.  I have four now: Sapphire and Mitch, my twins, and also May and Libby (short for Liberty). I love friends, they love me.  I don’t feel guilty anymore about loving Sophia.  There is so much love in my world and I feel like the luckiest guy.

I also understand that you have to love yourself to love anyone else.  There’s always love inside, and happiness.  When you know this you give and accept love freely.  Before you can love yourself though, you must know and accept yourself.  Acceptance doesn’t mean you don’t try to improve; you just know your demons and know they will haunt you forever and you just try to keep them down, in hiding.  You also know all of your light and you know you are good enough.  You are imperfect, you are human.

I understand that dishonesty hurts the liar more than the lied to.  It is a weight in the gut, a dark cloud blocking the sunshine in your soul.  If someone loves you, they will forgive you and accept you when you mess up.  In my experience, dishonesty and the subsequent mistrust are the most difficult things to get past.  Sometimes it’s easy to believe that you are smoothing things over, avoiding conflict, but it is like buying stuff on credit cards.  Sooner or later you will have to pay, with interest.  The worst truths I told May never did the damage of my nicest lies.  With May we made progress in demolishing the walls I had chosen to build- but I never felt either of us were the same after wards.  She forgave me but she bore the scars and insecurities.  They occasionally popped up, neither of us could control it or avoid it.  It just was; a natural consequence.  It was only because she was an exceptional human being that I didn’t ultimately destroy one of the great loves of my life.

Sophia and I made mistakes, but it was wonderful that we never had to question each other’s integrity, carefully weigh the other’s words.  We hurt each other, but we never lied about anything.  Sophia had a gift for being genuine- in your face sometimes, in ways that pissed me off for sure.  I know now that her honesty was still the best gift of my life, along with the babies she bore me.  I also know that my loving her, with her crystal clear bad and good sides, was something she was immensely grateful for and at some points in her life didn’t think would be possible. 

Our future is still uncertain.  It makes us live every day to its fullest.