Thank God for Cheaters

As I’ve been isolated from the outside world by my newly injured back as well as the sub-zero weather, I’ve had a lot of time to think and to read.  And as 2008 comes to a close, I can’t help but review the highlights of the year-gone-by.  So I’ve come to this:

Thank God for Cheaters.

I know I’ve devoted a good deal of consonants and vowels toward dealing with my disdain and anger about the situations I’ve found myself in romantically, but it’s time for me to get off the mat and lift a finger to the lord.  No, not that one.  The one next to it.  Yep.  That one.

Whether you believe that there’s a divine plan or not, or if you’d rather call it fate or destiny, it seems to me that it’s all in the way you look at it.  It could be a random sequence of events, or there could be a purpose behind all the… I think the doctors prefer the term “discomfort.”  And whatever it might have been for them wimmins that done broke my heart, all I know is that they’re someone else’s problem now.  Good riddance: Don’t let the door hit’cha where the good lord split’cha.

I don’t know if I totally believe in destiny, but from where I sit it looks like the world out there has a natural balance to it.  And maybe that’s all destiny is, really: the world just trying to stay level.  And maybe part of that process is that some people fight, and others live to fight another day.

Just about everything I know about relationships by watching my parents.  Yeah, they fight, they nag each other, they argue.  But, most of all, they love.  And no matter what happens, they will always put each other first.  I suppose that’s what happens after nearly 40 years of marriage.  Naively, I took that and went on my merry way in search of that great love that people write epic poems about, but the thing is that not everyone knows what love like that looks like.  And for some women, as the hard way has taught me, the prospect of being loved like that is pretty friggin freaky.

Hearts get broken along the way, but you gotta keep in mind that it’s all for the greater good. It’s all meant to keep the world from tipping over and spilling all over the place.  Cuz no one is gonna wanna clean that up.  Maybe my heart had to be broken to save a life, bring rain to a drought-stricken area, or help Scarecrow get a new brain.  Either way, if it weren’t for being cheated on, my own stubbornness and propensity toward blind devotion would have kept me in some really (for lack of a better word) shitty relationships.  I guess the best lesson I’ve learned this year (actually just the last few weeks) is that emotional pain is like credit:  You can either pay it all off right away in one lump sum, or you can pay it off little by little and keep it looming over your head like a bad day.

So here’s where it Begins (I thought it might end here, but this seems to be the first step rather than the last).  Experience helps you realize what you are not, and once those puzzle pieces are in place you start to see what you are.  So to all those cheaters in my past:  Thank You…

For showing me what friendship is: People with the maturity to not feel compelled to pick sides and who will do what’s best for you as their friend while doing what’s best for me as my friend.

For encouraging me to be even more proud to be Filipino.  My kids are gonna be brown anyway, and that shouldn’t be something that anybody has to “deal with.”

For helping me see that keeping quiet and sacrificing my own wants and needs almost never turns out well.

For demonstrating that it takes courage to allow yourself to be loved.

You’ve taught me a lot, oh Cheaters of my past, but most of all you’ve helped me uncover bits and pieces of who I am.  And while I’m still a work in progress, it’s time for me to stop carrying around all that debt and making perfectly innocent women pay.  So this is it.  Your lump sum.

I mean, imagine the alternative:  We could still be together.

At least I have that going for me.