Being Thankful for Things That DIDN'T Work Out

When I was 15, I was madly in love with a 17 year old boy. It was a summer romance, and my life was in chaos due to family problems and school bullying. Before summer ended, right before school started, I broke up with him, because I just couldn't handle one more thing on my plate. I tried, in vain, to get back in touch with him over the years but he went into the service, then married when he got out. Life went on. 

Not long ago, I was going through a box of things from my school years while decluttering and ran across a letter from a mysterious "Jimmy" and a mention of that Jimmy in my diary. I went to Facebook to look for him, and ended up finding my old boyfriend in the process. I messaged him, never expecting to really hear from him since he didn't seem to be a regular poster on Facebook, but I did. He didn't remember me at first, so I sent him my senior HS picture, and then he did. We chatted about our lives since high school, our families, and many other things. I was hoping we could be friends, and he seemed amenable to that, but then things went terribly awry.

Old feelings can be malicious things, rushing back in, sweeping your common sense aside. Somewhere in the midst of that chaos, we started to argue, and I saw things about him that I wish now I hadn't seen. For a fleeting moment, he was the same, sweet boy I had loved so much, but I soon figured out that he had demons that were determined to destroy our tentative hold on an ongoing friendship. We decided that it would be best not to communicate anymore, although I assured him I would always be here if he needed a friend. It was so painful, and I felt just like that 15-year-old girl who had lost her love. Tears flowed like someone had died, but it wasn't someone, it was a part of me that I had stuffed down long ago. I feel sad, but finally free of all that teenage angst and heartbreak.

 I will always love that sweet, shy 17-year-old boy, but I'm glad the universe kept us apart. I wouldn't have been able to handle the person Viet Nam turned him into. We would have destroyed each other, and gone on to destroy other people as well. As it was, he found the perfect wife, and has been with her for 34 years. They have a beautiful, close family that holds them up when tragedy hits, like her diagnosis of Alzheimer's three years ago. 

I often complained about my life situations to my father, and he always said, "You're right where you're supposed to be. You just can't see that yet, but down the road, you will." On many occasions, I've found that he was so right. I can't go back and change the past, and even if I could, should I? Shouldn't we all travel the paths the universe determines for us so we can become the people we are supposed to become?

 So no matter what life throws you, no matter how much it hurts, you have to be thankful for the things that didn't work out...because they were never meant to.