the better story

In films and in books and in romance in general, love at first sight is a big thing. Two people see each other in a crowd, their eyes meet, and they both immediately know that they are meant to be. And I've heard about stories like that in real life. My dad always says he knew the minute he saw my mother outside his high-school that she would be his wife someday. And the other night, my aunt's friend was telling the story of how she met her husband: they were in Paris, she was taking a seminar and he was teaching it. She dropped her pen on the floor and he picked it up for her, and their eyes met. She immediately told her friend "I have the strangest feeling this man is the man of my life." And they've been married twenty-years or so now. 

These stories are great. They make us all dream and smile, and hope for the kind of love that you see in "The Notebook" which makes every girl cry her eyes out. 

What's funny though is that many a times, these words have been said and things did not work out --so they're quickly forgotten. If things had worked out, the story would be told on every rooftop. My friend Rebelious got engaged 6 months after meeting her boyfriend, because "they just knew." They were married another 6 months later and at their wedding, he told the story of how the night they met, he told his friend that this is the girl he was going to marry. And he did marry her. But then they got divorced two years later. So much for a romantic story.

I'm not trying to poke holes into wonderful romance. I love these stories. I just think they trap us in these little boxes and make us feel like that's what we should look for, someone we're just going to look at and know within minutes that he's the one. I don't believe that anymore.

I think I was in love once or twice before. And each of these times, I had decided that I was "in love" almost instantly. In love with someone I didn't even know. Now I am convinced this comes from watching too much Cinderella and the Little Mermaid as a child, because how someone can love a person they know nothing about now seems completely absurd to me. You're in love with someone first and then you get to know them? And you find out what they're like and you have to accept them with all their faults because you already decided you love them. You love what, exactly? 

Love at first sight now seems  like a recipe for disaster. You meet someone, fall in love, have a picture of them in your mind and what happens next, in most cases, is that they keep disappointing you --they don't live up to that image. They are not want you wanted them to be, and once the infatuation wears off and you realize it, it only goes downhill from there.

And then you meet someone one day, and you don't expect anything. He makes you laugh maybe, something peeks your interest, but wedding bells aren't ringing in your ears, and you haven't pictured what your three children are going to look like within an hour of meeting him. You just meet him. And spending time with him is what makes you want to spend more time with him. And suddenly you find yourself surprised by the way he is. Good surprised. You didn't build-up an image, he builds it for your, little by little. You discover each other and the more you learn the more you like. And I think that's a better story.

scars

"I ask you right here to please agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived." Chris Cleave, Little Bee.

I read this sentence last night and I loved it so much I couldn't think of anything else to post today.

Scars come in many forms. I only have one scar on my body, and it's a pretty cool scar to have. I don't want to brag or anything, but when I was four years old, I got a bullet in my foot. I didn't exactly get shot at in a dramatic instant of the Lebanese civil war, but still --I got a bullet in my foot, and I was four years old. I remember this like it was yesterday. I was sitting at a political rally (God knows why anyone would take a four year old to a political rally in Beirut in 1989) next to another young girl. There was noise and clapping and some speech going on, and I was holding a Lebanese flag. Suddenly the girl next to me taps on my shoulder and points to her foot. And I gasped in horror: it was pouring out blood. "Are you okay?" I asked, panicking. "It's not me," she said. "It's you."

That's when I screamed. It wasn't the pain, not yet. It was the fear.

It took another 24 hours for everyone to realize it was a bullet that landed on my tiny right foot. First they took me to a clinic nearby because they couldn't reach a hospital, and because no one really knew how I came to have a hole in my foot by just sitting down, they all concluded that I must've hurt myself with the flag. So they sewed it up and sent me home. I spent all night with the bullet inside me, my foot swelling, red, burning and throbbing with pain, and my father trying to keep it cool. It was only the next day that they were able to take me to the hospital, do an X-ray, and tell my mother there was bullet. I still have the X-rays, and I still have the bullet. I take it out every once in a while and stare at it. If it had eyes I would be looking straight at them. This bullet could've landed anywhere, but it landed on me. It could've killed me, but it didn't. It's part of me now, part of my story. It's my scar, and I survived.

Not all scar stories are easy to share. The scars on our bodies, people can see them. They point to them, and ask "what happened?" and then you have a reason to tell them. But there are many scars which no one sees and no one asks about. And these are the scars that make us who we are.

I was talking about this with one of my best-friends not so long ago. We were saying how we had both been in relationships where our partners didn't understand our scars, didn't want to hear about them, didn't see their importance. They thought talking about those stories was like having a self-pity party. And like idiots, we avoided the topics that made us who we are. I could only ever be with someone who not only understands my scars, but appreciates them, loves them because they are a part of me. These scars are what set us apart, make us unique and build-up our life story. Someone who loves you is supposed to see that. Each of our stories gives us the context for people to understand why we are the way we are, and we should never be ashamed of it. I am proud of my scars and where they have taken me.

I have a friend whose father died when he was eleven. And this little boy turned himself into a man all by himself, took on responsibilities, worked hard since he was 14, never asked anyone for anything, and today is amazingly successful. Maybe to others, he is "normally" successful. But once you know the context, you'd know it's amazing.

Before a scar becomes a scar, it's an injury. It hurts, bleeds, burns. With time it heals, sometimes quickly, other times slowly, but it always heals. My scar is almost gone now. It's been 21 years since a bullet strayed into my life, and you can't really see it anymore. But I know it's there. It's my scar, and I survived.