Nancy got up with a sad feeling deep in her heart. How she regretted having to live through this day every year. Every year she would go down the memory lane and visit the same old shack by the sea where she had gone off all on her own for a vacation a few years ago and had met a man who, Nancy was sure since the moment she set her eyes on him, was going to be very important to her and was going to change her life forever. If only she had not spotted that figure on the beach. If only she had not offered the man a glass of wine. If only he had not accepted. If only they had not fallen in love.
But she had spotted that lonely figure on the beach.
She had offered the cold man a glass of wine.
He had accepted.
And they had fallen in love.
It was not something she regretted. Once in your life comes along the kind of love that we are all made to grow up believing in, but that we all learn in our own ways exists only in fairy-tales and dreams and good romantic books and cheesy romantic movies.
But she did regret not asking him to stay when she knew she could have and when she knew he would not have refused.
She regretted having heeded to the higher calling. She had put that man and his life and his path towards a better self, top-most on her list of priorities; and herself and her feelings and her happiness below it – just like she had been brought up to be; just like she had lived all her life.
Her children before her.
Her husband before her.
Her marriage before her.
Her parents, her job, the people around – the world before herself.
And that made her the good mother, the good wife, the good daughter, employee and person that everybody talked about and that everybody wanted everybody else to be – but also that that she did not like, forty years of life, fifteen years of marriage and two children later.
What good is life when you spend it living for others? Every waking moment, every breath, every thought spent on others. Every good deed always done for the betterment of others. Every sacrifice always made for the happiness of others.
And it was a weekend spent not with her husband but with a stranger in a shack many many miles away from her house that had made her think – what had she done in life for herself?
When was the last time she lived, laughed, loved for herself?
That one weekend with the man in the shack by the sea had given Nancy a taste of what life could have been – a man who loved every inch of her body, a man who loved her heart and soul and who wasn’t afraid to show it; a life with a companion who was very different from her, but who complemented her and understood her nonetheless.
And yes, he was a married man, much older to her, with a son only fifteen years younger to Nancy. He was a man with faults, much like her husband; and yet he was so different from her husband.
Nancy regretted not having asked the man to stay when it was time for him to leave. She knew she had had the power to make him wait; she knew he had longed for her to ask him to wait. He had left the decision in Nancy’s hand. And Nancy had again chosen to be the good mother and wife and had let him go, only to come back to an unfaithful husband and a broken marriage that she thought was her responsibility to try and save.
But no relationship works with the efforts of only one individual. It is a give and take.
However, that one weekend spent with that man in the shack by the sea many many miles away from her house had changed Nancy. She had returned to an unfaithful husband and a broken marriage, but without guilt or a false sense of morality. She had returned a changed woman, and she had taken charge of things and had changed her life – which included moving out of the house and life of her husband but along with her son and daughter, shifting base to a new city, making new friends and finding a new job and doing what she had always dreamt of doing; starting a plant nursery. Her daughter understood her; but Nancy would not have minded even if she hadn’t – she would when she grew up a little more. Her son still loved his mother, though he missed his father.
But Nancy was still haunted by the memories of the man she met on this day few years ago.
She was glad he had saved her.
She was glad he had shown her what her life could be, what it ought to be.
She was glad he had happened to her.
But she still regretted not having asked him to wait when she could have.
But she now understood the lines she had read many many years ago…
Love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.
The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us.
And to save us.
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