Compromise, Part 1

She doesn't know exactly who to turn to about this. Her mother gets teary eyed (but at least tells her to follow her heart). Other friends say things like, "I'll always be your friend, but there are red flags."

Maybe she's just not explaining herself well enough.

Because looking at it from the outside, sure, it looks bad. It looks like he's walked in and taken over her life, or, worse, that he's walked in, and she's handed it over.

That's not the case, at all.

She wanted a simple list of things:
*To fall in love
*To get away from her hometown

She's got the first one down, so what next?

She told him with great force in her voice, nearly in tears, sitting in a restaurant barely able to choke down the foccacia, that she wants to "get the hell out." She's not compromising; she's getting exactly what she wants.

She never settled on where she would go, and he offered a suggestion. Her request was vague. His was stable and specific.

Her friends do have a point. There was another man who offered, directly, to take her away with him. To have her as his wife and take her to Texas. And she was okay with that, for a brief moment.

This is one of those things that people judge her on, that this is not the first time she has considered someone the solution to all her problems.

But that was then. And this is real. The previous man was simply a fantastical solution to a wealth of issues. He was made of stardust and didn't even have one foot in reality. He was a temptation and a lesson, nothing more.

And if she had it to do again, well, she wouldn't have kept dating him.

But, when it comes down to it, maybe the people who once knew her best are basing their ideas on what they knew way back when. They're basing it on a girl who clung to her family. A girl who always went home on weekends. A girl who was afraid to go see what the world had to offer.

And maybe, just maybe, there are others who know her better, who understand her situation, who say things like, "compromise shows maturity."

Maybe she already has people who will listen to her worries.

Acceptance

She has finally begun to see that she will not have a life even remotely resembling the one she once envisioned:

A worthwhile job.
An adorable house.
An adoring husband.
Two or four or six kids running amuck.
All starting with a husband at 22.

Of course, the husband at 22 never materialized, and she's ridiculously grateful that she's had the intervening years to find herself, discover her identity. She would have made a horrible wife at that age and would likely not make a good one right now, not yet anyway.

After a series of hopeful comments and interesting discussions, she paused to think about the life she now sees for herself.

For the first time, there is a blank slate.

This is at once depressing and a great relief. There is no particular life towards which she is aspring. Certainly, she wants to get married (and specifically, she wants to marry him) and have children (his), but there is no outline for how this will occur, no deadlines, no specific script that must play out in order for her to obtain happiness.

"Have you ever struggled with wanting to be successful and than realizing that being happy could be the same as being successful?" She asked him.

"Yes." He said.

And with that word, she remembered why she fell in love with him in the first place.

Glimpses of herself in a charming cafe in Boston, New York, heck, even Chicago or what about Rome, dot her imagination, but they don't drive her. She once craved a life in New York City, the Big Apple, Manhattan Island, where she could prove her mettle and make it once and for all. She once craved, as Michael Cunningham said, more of the same, a life exactly like the one she imagined her parents had at the start of their marriage. A tiny house with a big back yard, lots of love and frequent barbecues in that big backyard.

She never envisioned a quiet apartment with the wind howling outside, sitting alone on her couch at 26, pondering her future. But she is fast understanding that, though she held onto it for years past its expiration date (should, in fact, have come to terms with it perhaps as many as ten years ago, when she started college with no boyfriend to her name and no clue as to what she wanted other than a husband), the life she envisioned for herself is not the one worthy of her, not the one meant for her.

She finds it a great relief to pause and consider the life in the future and realize that a life unscripted is the only way to live.

This unscripted life could be less than what she planned, but it will also be more. It will lead her places she never foresaw and others she would have eschewed as impossible as little as a year ago. It will be better. It will be worse. It will be the same. It will be different.

But, most of all, it will be hers.

Just Wondering

"So, what was the point?"

"The point of what."

"Of meeting the dream guy whose type I wasn't? I mean I got all worked up about him, thought he was THE guy, and then...nothing. What was the point of him all those months ago?"

"You needed to know you get all worked up about someone again."

"Seriously? That's it? You think?"

"I don't know. What brings this up?"

"Oh, I was just thinking about how interesting it is the way things turn out. And the one who actually is THE guy has a lot in common with used-to-be-dream guy."

"Well, then that's easy. You just got confused. Somewhere inside, you knew some of the qualities of your particular Mr. Right. You just noticed them in the wrong guy. It's like when you're a kid and you see your mom in a store, and you run over to her, and almost take her hand, then realize it's not your mom."

"Just a case of mistaken identity then?"

"Precisely."