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There You Are

I have waited such a long time for you; and now as you have returned to my life, I am breathless in complete joy.  It has been such an incredibly long absence.

Today, my heart lept at a happy ending in a movie.  I had not seen this movie before, but had remember seeing the trailer for it.  Return to Me with Minnie Driver and David Duchovny from 2000 is such a sweet story of love and hope.  I am adding it to my list of movies that restore a sense of faith in love and happiness.  It has taken me so long to be able to look at happy couples and not feel an overwhelming sense of guilt and sadness.  I not only believe in "happily ever after"; but more importantly, I believe that the world would be a better place if more people ascribed to my view.  Having hope in something like "happily ever after" creates a blind devotion to an ideal.  This is important because we spend too much of our effort devoted to material things, to other people; worse, many spend their time devoted to nothing at all.

No wonder I love old movies.

One of my coworkers was trying desperately to dissuade another coworker from believing that friendship could transcend time.  The hopeful young woman was talking about how she and her friend who now lives in another state are hoping to go to college together next year and are scouting different colleges together.  It is such a beautiful story of friendship.

The other coworker, only a little bit older and already in college, made the statement that friendship like this do not exist.  Her position is that each individual must make decisions for his/her own benefit.  Putting myself into the conversation (ok, butting in), I told the hopeful high school senior to always have faith in something more than herself.  I told her that all good relationships are about a commitment to the other person, not the search for someone who is perfect.  I was completely shocked at myself.  Not only for butting in to someone else's conversation, but also for my position on commitment.

Welcome back, Kotter!!

Then again this morning as I am beginning my day - laundry, small repairs, cleaning - I put the background noise to Return to Me and found myself glued to the story.  In the last 14 years I have rarely watched "happily ever after" movies.  Those brief moments when I would find hope were always so fleeting, and I would return to the dark and dejected pragmatism that had become my personality. It's part of PTSD, allowing our schema to alter.  Sadly, one small trauma after another in the last 14 years had almost altered my schema completely.  I am so overjoyed to know that a brief flicker of hope and optimism exists inside of me.

So, to be a woman of my own words, today I will make a commitment to this ideal, to myself.  Anything is possible with faith.  I ordered myself a new case for my phone, one with Audrey Hepburn from Breakfast at Tiffany's on it.

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