Thursday, September 30, 2010

Life lesson 34,722: How to be happy for someone else



Dear John,

I am so, so incredibly happy for you.

Well, no, I guess I'm not. I'm not unhappy for you, but I don't really feel happy, either. But I think if I keep saying that I am, either I'll start feeling it, or the repetition will trick my mind into thinking I really feel it. Either of which is suitable.

We were babies who fell in love years ago. Usually, I would say young love is infatuation saturated by the satisfaction of finally fulfilled sexual daydreams, but for us, it was real. Really real. So real, in fact, that I still love you.

I would never, ever tell anyone this. But if you were to ask me to, I would quit my job, boyfriend, and life to move across the continent (across the world, if necessary) and marry you in a day. That's how much I still love you. Or how disillusioned I am with adult life that I want that badly to go back to the simplistically difficult life that was my youth.

But you would never ask me to. So, I will continue to work at my literal and figurative garden with my meat-and-potatoes-love, praying that he never learns to like cherry tomatoes so I can continue to have them all to myself.

And I will continue to hope that you do and don't invite me to your wedding, and that I will and won't meet your fiancee, and that you are and aren't happy for the rest of your life.

My life as a hypocrite suites me quite well.

I am so, so incredibly happy for you. May you have found everything you ever wanted.

I love you, too,
jane

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