"i originally posted this july 1, 2010 in french as "une autre occasion" but i thought i post it again in english."
"have you ever felt like you had unfinished business with somebody? i mean, like you two were on the verge of something great but things didn't progress the way you wanted them to for some reason? have you ever been filled with regret over such things? i don't know, maybe i'm making too much of our situation. i once wrote that i thought unrequited love was the worst kind of love there was and at the time i believed that to be true. loving somebody who doesn't return your feelings is a horrible position to be in. and i don't wish experiencing that on everybody. but then i discovered forbidden love and in terms of pure despair, it blows unrequited love out of the water. loving someone who loves you the same way but can't be with you is a heartbreak you feel on a daily basis. we had always cared for one another but for months everything between us, every text message, every phone call, every e-mail, took us from having love for each other to being in love. not that us falling in love was all that surprising, we had history and you can't discount the history between two people. ever.
i mean i'd known her forever and i'd liked her when we were younger but i'd never said anything. i'd only see her once a week but when she was around i'd watch her secretly, hoping that she'd look my way and there would be a moment where our eyes met. but every time she'd look my way, i'd turn away, terrified that my eyes would relay how badly i wanted her to be mine. hoping that she'd smile at me as if she were happy i was there. she had a beautiful smile. of all the appealing qualities she had, and there were plenty, when i look back at our times together her smile is always the thing i think about the most. it was luminous, it was sunshine on a rainy day. i called it my "cloud lifter". but i never told her how much i looked forward to seeing it or her every week. i never figured she knew i existed after we greeted each other with "good morning's" or acknowledged each other in passing. so it was hard to hear when during the months we were falling in love, she told me that she had liked me but she never said anything. that she had been doing the same things i was doing. the glances and the hoping not to get noticed looking. the secret desire to be together. but she was scared i didn't want her. so we never knew how the other person felt about us and we moved on to other people. and then she was gone. and then she was married. and any opportunity for us at that time had passed because we were both too afraid of letting the other know that what we had could have lead to happiness between the two of us.
everything between us over those months, every text, phone call and e-mail, led to me wanting her in my life again, to finally get the opportunity to hold her in my arms like i should have done many years before. despite the fact that she was still married. she was unhappy and i was unhappy but we both knew we could be happy together. so when there came a time i was going to be back home and she could make it to where i was, i wasn't going to pass up the chance to see her. when she pulled up i was outside waiting for her. we had made plans, so it wasn't like it was unexpected she was there but there's a difference between saying you're going to do something and actually doing it. shakespeare said, "talking isn't doing. it is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds" and she was actually in my face. she parked her car and started walking towards me, smiling that smile i dream about. i hadn't seen her in eight years but she was still a beautiful woman, a vision of loveliness, a goddess and i was but a humble mortal, unworthy to have been in her presence, unworthy of the love she professed for me. emerson said, "never lose an opportunity of seeing anything beautiful, for beauty is god's handwriting." well god had never written a with more perfect stroke. as she approached all i could think about was kissing her right there on the sidewalk, oblivious to anyone and anything around us. just me and her, statuesque, a single moment in time where we could be one. our bodies frozen in embrace and our lips locked together. and if that had been all was for us, i would have been happy knowing that we had finally gotten to express our feelings we had for one another physically. the time for words has passed for us, we had talked enough. this was our time. this was our moment.
i never did get to love her the way i wanted to that day. when i started this thought, i asked about regret and while i could write about missing out on the opportunity to make love to her, i won't. i'll just say the situation wasn't ideal and things beyond us happened that couldn't have been avoided. but i was glad everything that occurred between us occurred and not too terribly disappointed about the things that didn't. i got to spend time with her and that was really the most important thing i had hoped to accomplish during her visit. i've never been a man who has wanted much for himself. and that day i actually got what i wanted: a little time in her presence. plus, i got to hear her whisper "i love you" into my ear. and that's always good. so no, i don't regret that day, i don't regret loving her, and i won't regret writing this.
this is my tribute to voltaire so let me quote him. "paradise was made for tender hearts; hell, for loveless hearts." i found paradise that day because i experienced her love and i'll never know hell because of that love."
7-1-10
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