Questions

My friend Julie posted on her blog about how men complicate things, prompting these thoughts.

Men do complicate things. It is so sad for me to think back on the last year and realize how it was filled with the man I was engaged to but how now it's all over. There was the surprising finding of each other under our very noses, the very short friendship (short in that it so quickly progressed to romance) and the excitement of beginning to date. By the beginning of October we were dating intensely, seeing each other several times a week, if not every day. We spent most holidays together and took road trips all over the Midwest visting friends and family. We became engaged in April and made so many beautiful plans. We struggled and sorrowed sometimes, but mostly we just had fun. We had so much darn fun. And every memory of my last year, it seems is entertwined with him.

And now he's gone. He chose to leave, for rather bewildering reasons that have left so many shaking their heads and leaving me, of course, in emotional shambles. The good news is that I have exciting plans and will soon be moving overseas, without the complications of a long-distance fiance and wedding plans. The problem for me, then, is in reviewing the last year.

If so much of the last year was good (and it was) how much of it was because of him? I'll be honest and admit that much of it was because of him. But now he's gone. What do I do with the last year? I refuse to mark it out of my life, erase my blog and start over. In fact, I made the conscious choice to leave my engagement photos and dating photos up here. It was my life. It happened, and it was good. I'm not going to pretend it never happened.

But I do find myself wondering why the last year had to happen at all. I know myself well enough to know I would have been perfectly happy living my final year in Evanston (final for now, anyway) as a single woman. What if he and I had never started dating? I would not know be reeling with such pain, experiencing such grief. It would not jab me in the heart everytime his car is parked in front of my house (when he is at his family's place next door, suddenly a cold stranger, and I must avoid going into my back yard in case I run into him over the fence) and every restaurant, movie, favorite walking path and relative and friend's house would not be fraught with such sad, confused memories.

I have to believe that there is good in choosing to trust, to love, to experience, even if it ended so horribly. I have to believe that God will bring a good out of this suffering that could not otherwise have been. I have to believe that it's worth it to open up my heart, even if I don't know the outcome.

The day that my ex broke our engagement in fact, I first had lunch with a friend. She was embarking on a new relationship and shared her fear of trusting. And I said, "But you have to trust! You have to let go and let yourself become vulnerable, not knowing what will happen, because otherwise you'll never get anything good. I'm so glad I chose to trust my fiance. I didn't know it would work out, but it did, and look what a marvelous payoff I got."

That night, of course, he ended it. And I was forced to reexamine my words to my friend. A few days later, when we talked, I said through my tears, "I still mean it, you know. I still am glad that I chose to trust him and to take risks and open myself up. Because the alternative is a miserable, closed, controlled life."

I do believe that, but it's so hard to believe right now, when all of my photographs from the last year tell a happy story that had a horrific ending.