I’d always contended that things “always happen for a reason” whenever something unexpected and otherwise unexplained happened to me. Getting pregnant with The Governor was one thing. Meeting a certain person who had no other real purpose in my life but to give me a much needed ego boost was another. Finally, not getting that “perfect job” in a small, secluded lakeside town the Midwest town last September was the last significant unexplained happening to leave its indelible mark on these past four years of my life.
Yet, when it comes to actually identifying those reasons, one can never be too sure.
For instance, perhaps The Governor’s existence cemented mine and Conan’s relationship because he gave us a life which required us to dig in and commit ourselves to having something solid to the point of near-tangibility binding us. Or perhaps he came along because I need to grow past who I was five years ago, and to perhaps put my career goals into much needed perspective. Four years after his birth, is still too short of a time to be able to assess his mark on my life.
Now the Southern Gentlemen—I’m still mystified with this one. To be honest, I still think a bit about him, and the memories haven’t necessarily been buried away, and in fact they are still slightly implanted in my brain, much like the stretchmarks I have on my inner thighs from my pregnancy. To be sure, they are quite faint. For what its worth, he bears a certain resemblance to Jesse Brinkley on The Contender.
Which accounts for the very real fascination, on my part and the need to watch NBC on Sunday nights. Such sweet, pathetic fascination-so apparently strong that it has yet to just go away. But one could say that I needed his influence and its effects on my psyche, and allowed me to see that I was just too good to be treated so poorly by my workplace colleagues. Or that I was attractive to some.
I don’t think I’ll ever be the same again, I told him late in our friendship, right before his presence in my life reduced itself to mere memories.
Who really knows what all of these things “mean?” And why do I persist in having them mean something at all? Because I am someone who persists in having faith, but not merely faith in religion or any sort of idiomatic philosophy. I have faith in the general sense: I need to trust in the unseen and unproven. And I need that faith, particularly when it comes to me. I need to have faith many days just to continue working without collapsing at my desk in exasperation at the twentieth thing I did wrong. I need to have faith that I can do this whole mommy-thing, after The Governor has worked his way around my attempts to convince him to please go to bed (his logic is infallible these days). It is a necessary, critical factor in my daily survival.
Probably the only time I’ll truly get to discern the meaning of it may be when I’m old and arthritic and have the benefit of years and years of good old plain living. But for now, I think I’m okay with my little bucket of faith.