Today is also another infamous day for me. It brings memories of a day that never got to happen. It is the day that I was supposed to get married last year. I'm not sure if today should be a day of celebration that it didn't happen and I was able to take my life somewhere I never thought it would be, or if it should be a day of ... not going to finish that sentence. It's both, though. I wish I could sleep through the entire day and have it pass me by like it never even happened. "June 5th was yesterday? Oh good. I missed it." But instead, I'll have to busy myself the entire day so I won't be able to let myself think about it. But none of it was my fault. I did all I could. I gave 100% of myself. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe you shouldn't give 100% of yourself to anyone. I don't believe that, though.
I believe that we had a good seven years. I believe that we had a good time together. I believe that we loved each other. And I don't believe that he is a bad person. I think he just found someone else who made his heart spark more than I did, and I hope that I meet someone else who makes my heart spark more than he did.
I remember when I was in high school and my dad was teaching one of his Junior Achievement classes in one of the second grade classes at the elementary school next door. I went to help after school one day. He was favoring one kid over the others. The kid was probably from a poor family and didn't have much. He wanted attention, I could tell. It was the last day of class and the kid who had improved the most was going to win the soft-back Junior Achievement briefcase that my dad had carried all the materials in to school. Of course that kid won it, and his face just lit up. I wondered why he didn't give it to the smart kid. Or the kid like me who was always just a little bit more than average who was often overlooked because they weren't the best or the worst. I didn't understand it then, but I understand it now. Giving that briefcase to that kid meant a lot to both of them. To my dad as a teacher, and to that kid as it was probably the only thing he had ever won. It gave him confidence in himself. It gave him bragging rights to something good. And it let him go home and tell his mom that he did good in school that day.
I told my dad that day that one of the kids in the class reminded me of myself. He said, "You're there. Elizabeth is there. They're all there." He meant that though people are different, though we all look different and we all have individual goals and personalities underneath, the same handful of personalities show up in everyone. There is the smart kid. The show off. The bully. The gullible one. The fat kid. The skinny, timid kid. The bad kid. The kid who needs attention. The kid who hides in the corner because he doesn't want any attention. It was true in that classroom of seven year old's, it's true of the kids I teach here in Korea on the other side of the world, and I find its true of all people now that I'm older.
I need to find someone with an overlying personality of honesty, strength, love and adventure. In the meantime, I have music. And friends. And my own goals of living in this world and writing about it.
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