sailorfrank

Once upon a time, when my life was still in the downward spiral to the lowest point it has ever been. A sexy young woman got out of a car in front of me, and I turned to my friend and said.

"Is that an Angel?"

Well that Angel and I spent the better part of the next 24 hours connecting stronger than I'd ever connected with someone to that point.

She and I lived with one another in a small shared bedroom sleeping on a full size bed together almost every night for the better part of 4 months. We never touched one another sexually, but I knew I wanted her to be happy.

I'd forgotten most of what we shared over the past 13 years... but I have often relayed the story of how being introduced to the musical Rent, while holding her in my arms, both taught me a great deal about the moments that make up happiness, and showed me what unconditional love could be.

I also have relayed how I stayed up with her doing coke for 36 hours just to be awake to prevent the stranger in our room from taking advantage of her. Somehow I played it off as jealousy in my own mind... but really it was something more.

Today we communicated for the first time in 13 years. And she reminded me of just how much we can forget.

Once at a club, I had a very bad feeling about her, so I went to find her, she was intoxicated a bit and moments away from being raped in a dark corner of the club. I pulled him off of her, and got her away from him, he was in her words "some creepy magician guy". The event went unspoken and then we lost touch... but one of the first things she said upon reconnecting was that she never thanked me for that... that she'd told that story countless times and how I was her savior. I didn't remember until she told me what I'd done.

She also thanked me for the countless nights I kept her laughing and safe... she was a stripper at the time, young and prone to wild abandon... and I suppose in doing that I fulfilled my need to feel like I was protecting someone instead of harming them for once.

I remember clearly that when we drifted apart, she really didn't understand what I'd done for her. I did feel hurt, even betrayed.

When she lost her mother years later, she came to understand how important those little signs of love were... and just how much they really impacted her life for the better.

Looking back I didn't see it that way. I saw it through my haze of PTSD and unfulfilled desire. Those things... the smiling, the understanding, the love, they were only things I could squeeze out through the cracks in the wall of pain I was feeling.

But to her, I was one of her best and most memorable friends.

Now she's a member of a great contemporary dance troupe on Oahu, deeply in new love, and filled with the wisdom I'd always known she was capable of realizing.

I feel like now I have so much more to give than I did then.

I suppose I can understand how in that light it should hurt even more when someone took even more of my support and love and ran away from it similarly.

But... I have two people who do those little things for me on a daily basis, who are in a way what I was to Geneva. Two who make me happy... and help me feel like I can accomplish my goals.

And now Geneva is somewhere in the distance, text on a screen perhaps, but her spirit is obvious and present, and somehow I don't feel so bad about those dark days of yore. Perhaps even for my mistakes and my slide to the dark side, I have to accept that at my worst, I was still holding on to the light side.

I wonder just how deeply I colored myself as a villain in those times. I also wonder now what the scales of my life would really show if my own perception of my failings were lifted from it's platforms. I suspect I know both those answers at least to some degree. But I don't want to appear (even if only to myself) like I have lost my humility.

Then there is the other thing that reconnection has reminded me of.

To treasure the love I have for others, and what they have provided me.

To that end... here I go... in no particular order Spoiler-ed for brevity's sake. Feel free to stop reading any time... like the above this isn't for your benefit... it's for mine.