TIME TO LOOK BACK
Once in your life it happens.
I was supposed to write this on June 29 but I found the greater opportunity to do it now.
I just watched "Cast Away" and what I didn't realize when I saw it many years ago was that it was a good love story... full of symbolisms and parallelisms.
Yes, it was that shipwrecked man, Chuck, played by Tom Hanks. He found himself stranded on an island for four years leaving behind the woman he loved so much. The woman to whom he said "I'll be right back".
Sadly, he never came back.
We all find ourselves stranded at one time in our lives. It's when we meet that one person. That one person that makes your world stop. It's that one person that changes everything about your existence. The one who transports you to a whole new place and lets you see your life in a completely different light. It's like going to an entirely different world. Much like... an island.
And you just don't seem to mind getting lost in it... knowing you share it with that one person of your life. You may even find yourself numb to all the ridicule of friends and everyone around you. You breathe in. Take it all in and, for a second, you feel alone. Lost in yourself and in that ONE PERSON you've given your whole being to.
After a while you find yourself getting deeper. For the more you give to that person the more you lose a part of the relationship. For in every relationship comes a time when numbness gives way to hurt. When too much of your love for each other starts to poison you and everything that once was turns out to be nothing of what it has become today.
That's the saddest discovery of my life. And I shall forever ask to the heavens how something so BEAUTIFUL could end up into something so ROTTEN.
Before you even know it you find yourselves lost in a sea of uncertainties... of doubt, betrayal and most of all... hurt.
Then you just wake up to find yourselves even more lost. It's like being together but never really being there for each other.
And you know deep within you that no matter how many hugs, flowers and stolen kisses you compensate with will NEVER bring back the past happiness you once enjoyed together.
For the sad fact of life is that that one person whom you sleep and eat with; cry and sigh with... that person with whom you believe destiny rolled out it's hands for you even before the two of you were born is now a completely different person. And you have nothing to call that person but "Hurt".
Like Chuck and Kelly, we all go through that and unfortunately have to accept that meeting that person does not exactly last forever. For one more bittersweet discovery I have learned is that SIMPLY BECAUSE SOMETHING DOESN'T LAST FOREVER, IT DOESN'T MEAN IT CAN'T BE THE GREATEST THING IN YOUR LIFE.
Thus I've grown to accept and always look back that in our lives... we will meet that ONE PERSON who will make us forget and get lost. The one who will teach us to LOVE and give everything without condition. The one within what we'd come to call in the future as the "Greatest Story Ever Told'. That very story in our lives which sadly but usually ENDS.
So Chuck came back to Kelly after four years. But who could blame Kelly for having a husband and family? Pain made her let go for all those times that Chuck wandered into the far-flung island, she had to live for their story to go on.
Thus, Chuck came back with a broken heart and a lost Kelly. She moved on. But how does Kelly now deal with the fact that all those years that Chuck didn't come back was four agonizing years of hard-work and misery to be with her again? That's love. It's pure. It finds its way and it never lasts.
At the end Chuck comes to see Kelly for the first time in years and they catch up, exchange muted hugs and an unspoken bond that seemed to say "I love you but it's over". Like a way of saying "THIS STORY HAS TO END FOR THE LOVE TO LIVE FOREVER".
And I just feel lucky enough to experience something so magical. Probably the same magic that Kelly felt when she ran after Chuck only to tell him that, despite all those years she had a life of her own, "YOU ARE THE LOVE OF MY LIFE!"
It's the magic beyond time and space. IT'S THE THOUGHT OF KNOWING THAT YOU LOST HER FOREVER BUT IT'S THE WAY SHE CHANGED YOU THAT'S THE SAME REASON WHY SHE'LL STAY WITH YOU FOREVER.
Time has started healing and now I can say, without any tinge of bitterness or regret, that I went through the greatest part of my life.
"After all those years, I lost Kelly again" said Chuck. "But I have to keep breathing. For tomorrow the sun will rise and you never know what the tide could bring."
