A rose in waiting
“I wonder how X is doing”
I found myself thinking yesterday.
She’d been my best workmate in my last job. I’d thought the world of her.
Funny, pretty, caring, spirited, kooky, into cool music, amazing dress sense …..
We’d been the only childfree two in our thirties in the office (well, unless you counted the odd folk) and we’d bonded over that.
Every Friday, we’d have a long lunch in some overpriced café, chew the fat…..but it had got me down the way she’d - as I saw it- let herself be bullied by her husband. He’d treated her terribly for many years. You know the type - “don’t wear that”, “you’re embarrassing me”, “you need to lose weight…..”
Why didn’t she leave?
How sad and frustrating it was to see my outgoing, vibrant friend stifled by this cruel man.
Of course, me being me, I told her all this. Many times.
After having my son it was hard to retain our connection. “Bring him with you” she’d say, inviting me for lunch but only someone with a child with similar additional needs and behavioural issues can really understand how impossible that would have been.
One day, I awoke to a text to say the shit had hit the fan. Her husband had taken his own life. Damn! No-one had seen that coming. I started to think of his control issues from a new angle. Perhaps they’d come about because he was severely depressed and full of self hate?
The years passed. My friend and I grew more distant as life took us in different directions, and sadly, one day last year, we fell out because I posted something on Twitter that upset her and I refused to apologise for voicing my opinion.
Anyway, yesterday I had one of those ‘urge to stalk’ moments. I looked over on her page and there she stood…..simply shining!
She’d had a civil partnership ceremony with her new fella the day before. Wearing beautiful, bold colours, tattooed AF and pierced to the max, she glowed - her true unapologetic self.
And then her words;
“I can honestly say that I’ve never been this happy.”
I looked at her face - alive, radiant, loved……this woman who had endured so much - and I confess to shedding a tear.
The moral of the story - never stop believing.
Sometimes we’re meant to wait a while, endure some thorns……
BUT
Don’t give up.
The bloom of your life is a rose in waiting.
.
I read my piece back and didn’t want people to think I was oversimplifying, making it sound too syrupy. I’m sure she still has stuff to deal with, as we all do. I do sometimes see (too much?) good when others don’t.
I remember years ago showing someone a photo I’d taken of a dog on a sunset beach. I’d loved the way I’d captured the silhouette, the colours… Until she pointed out, her being a dog owner, that it was gearing up to take a shit.
“No…..sorry, looks like he’s straining, Julie…” makes me laugh remembering that😂
This one really got me thinking. You can have picture of a rose in bloom or with it’s petals decaying. You can define someone by their most glowing of social media posts or their most private of fuck-ups. Pharmaceutical companies will deliberately select surrogate end points for their vaccine trials as soon as they see a positive signal because they know that the longer they leave them, the more diminishing the data returns.
Parenthood, careers, marriage, divorce - are these beginnings or endings? Burdens or liberations? Are they all just as insignificant to the cosmos or all just as potentially meaningful?
What can life be other than finding our own meanings, telling our own stories? Even if we accept that these are just constructs then they may as well be as filled with hope and beauty as we can make them. But neither can the stories just be lies. They need enough grounding in reality that they don’t leave us feeling unconvinced and empty.
I’m glad that there are writers like you who can act as our guides in this way.
Thanks again.