Maybe in Another Life

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

If words were things, I would have rushed to pluck them out of the air and put them back in my mouth.

I have no idea what I want to be doing with my life, no idea what my purpose is, and no real sign of a life goal. And yet time has found me.

He still, all these years later, shines brighter to me than other people. Even after I got over him, I was never able to extinguish the fire completely, as if it’s a pilot light that will remain small and controlled but very much alive.

The way it feels, his lips on my skin, makes me realize I have spent years looking for that feeling and never finding it. I have settled for casual flings, halfhearted love affairs, and a married man, searching for that moment when your heart jumps in your chest.

Life is long and full of an infinite number of decisions. I have to think that the small ones don’t matter, that I’ll end up where I need to end up no matter what I do. My fate will find me.

It is the teenage feelings that are the most intoxicating, the ones that have the power to render you helpless.

“You loved me,” he says. “Yeah,” I say. “I did. I loved you so much it sometimes burned in my chest.”

“From experience, I can tell you that if you go around trying to figure out what’s fair in life or whether you deserve something or not, that’s a rabbit hole that is hard to climb out of.”

Do you know how heartbroken I’d be to live in a world you weren’t in?”

But the fact of the matter is that I worry that I’ll believe him too much, that I’ll become too easily swayed into believing what I want to believe about him. I don’t want to do what I would have done before. I don’t want to believe what a person says and ignore what he does. I don’t want to see only what I want to see.

But who on this planet, when asked directly if they are uncomfortable, admits they are? It’s an impossible question. It forces you to make the other person feel better about invading your personal space.

I guess it’s the small things in a marriage that grate on you the most.

The difference between life and death could be as simple and as uncomfortably slight as a step you take in either direction. Which means that I am here today, alive today, because I made the right choices, however brief and insignificant they felt at the time. I made the right choices.

I feel like myself around him. And I like myself around him.

In general, I find that when you are doing something you are not supposed to be doing, the best course of action is to act as if you are absolutely supposed to be doing it.

But I get there eventually. That’s me in a nutshell. I’ll get there eventually.

For some reason, I think I’ll feel better if things are meant to be. It gets me off the hook, doesn’t it? If things are meant to be, it means I don’t have to worry so much about consequences and mistakes.

“You think too much,” he says. “That’s your problem. You’re trying too hard to find the perfect answer when an answer will do.”

Because that is truly all I want in this world. I want to try to do something myself, knowing that when I have nothing left, someone will take me the rest of the way.

“We can both just hate them for as long as we need to, and then, one day, when we feel stronger, we’ll probably forgive them for being imperfect, for doing a terrible thing. One day, sooner than you think, I bet we’ll go so far as to wish them the best and not give them another thought, because we’ll have moved on with our lives. But you don’t have to believe that right now. You can just hate him.

“Divide the pain in two,” I tell her. “And give half of it to me.”

“I don’t know, I’m starting to think maybe you just pick a place and stay there. You pick a career and do it. You pick a person and commit to him.”

“I think as long as you’re happy and you’re doing something good with your life, it really doesn’t matter whether you went out and found the perfect thing or you chose what you knew you could make work for you.”

Life is just a series of breaths in and out. All I really have to do in this world is breathe in and then breathe out, in succession, until I die. I can do that. I can breathe in and out.

“Because you are the kind of person who deserves a fuss made over her. That’s why. And I’m just the guy to do that.”

I hear my voice cracking. I try desperately to get it under control. I know that letting him know how badly I want to see him again will only serve to push him further away. I know that. But sometimes you can’t help but show the things you feel. Sometimes, despite how hard you try to fight your feelings, they show up in the glassiness of your eyes, the downward turn of your lips, the shakiness of your voice, and the lump in your throat.

You know what? I don’t think I misinterpreted a goddamn thing. I like him. I like being around him. I like being near him. I like the way he smells and the way he never shaves down to the skin. I like the way his voice is sort of rocky and deep. I like his passion for his job. I like how good he is at it. I just like him. The way you like people when you like them. How he makes me laugh when I least expect it.

I mean, I think I have to believe that life will work out the way it needs to. If everything that happens in the world is just a result of chance and there’s no rhyme or reason to any of it, that’s just too chaotic for me to handle. I’d have to go around questioning every decision I’ve ever made, every decision I will ever make. If our fate is determined with every step we take… it’s too exhausting. I’d prefer to believe that things happen as they are meant to happen.”

When you sit there and wish things had happened differently, you can’t just wish away the bad stuff. You have to think about all the good stuff you might lose, too. Better just to stay in the now and focus on what you can do better in the future.

When people are nice and sincere and they don’t fire back with smart-ass remarks, it makes my harmless sarcastic words seem downright rude.

There is only so long you can be condescended to before you want to jump out of your skin.

Because he made things better, and now he’s gone. And because he made me feel stupid. Because I thought he cared about me. I thought that maybe I meant something to him. And I’m angry that I don’t.

“I just sometimes hoped that I could have something more than just fine. Someone who made me feel like I hung the moon.

“Wow,” I tell her. “Your friend sounds nuts.” “Yours, too,” she says. “Think they’ll be OK?” I ask her. “I know I’m supposed to say yes, but the truth is, I think they’re doomed.” The two of us start laughing. It’s probably much, much funnier to us than it would seem to anyone else. But the way she says we’re doomed makes it clear just how not doomed we are. And that feels like something to let loose and laugh about.

“Do you think sometimes you can just tell about a person?” “Like you meet them and you think, this one isn’t like the rest of them, this one is something?” “Yeah,” I tell her. “Exactly like that.”

I think you can. That’s what I think. I think I’ve always thought that. I thought it the first time I met Ethan. I thought there was something different about him, something special. And I was right. Look at what we had. It turned out not to be for a lifetime, but that’s OK. It was real when it happened.

“Don’t start with that. Never start with ‘I know this sounds crazy.’ Come from strength. He’d be lucky to be with you. You’ve got an extraordinary attitude, a brilliant heart, and an infectious optimism. You are a dream woman. Come from strength.”

How often can you say that about somebody and really mean it? That the two of you have potential for something great?

Maybe one day, we’ll get the timing right. Maybe this is the middle of a longer love story.” “I like that idea.” “Or maybe we just weren’t meant to be,” I say. “And maybe that’s OK.”

It doesn’t matter if we don’t mean to do the things we do. It doesn’t matter if it was an accident or a mistake. It doesn’t even matter if we think this is all up to fate. Because regardless of our destiny, we still have to answer for our actions. We make choices, big and small, every day of our lives, and those choices have consequences. We have to face those consequences head-on, for better or worse. We don’t get to erase them just by saying we didn’t mean to. Fate or not, our lives are still the results of our choices. I’m starting to think that when we don’t own them, we don’t own ourselves.

You can only forgive yourself for the mistakes you made in the past once you know you’ll never make them again.

“Squeeze my hand,” I tell her as I take her hand in mine. “When it hurts so bad you don’t think you can stand it, squeeze my hand.” She starts crying again, and she squeezes. And at that moment, I realize that if I have taken away a fraction of her pain, then I have more purpose than I have ever known.

I’m learning not to read too much into good things. I’m learning just to appreciate the good while you have it in your sights. Not to worry so much about what it all means and what will happen next.

“I’m just going to do my best and live under the assumption that if there are things in this life that we are supposed to do, if there are people in this world we are supposed to love, we’ll find them. In time. The future is so incredibly unpredictable that trying to plan for it is like studying for a test you’ll never take.

That’s what you do when you want something. You don’t look for reasons why it won’t work. You look for reasons why it will.

“You said it yourself,” I tell him. “Sometimes the timing just doesn’t work out.” “I’m not sure I believe in that anymore, either,” he says. “Timing seems like an excuse. Extenuating circumstances is an excuse. If you love someone, if you think you could make them happy for the rest of your life together, then nothing should stop you. You should be prepared to take them as they are and deal with the consequences. Relationships aren’t neat and clean. They’re ugly and messy, and they make almost no sense except to the two people in them. That’s what I think. I think if you truly love someone, you accept the circumstances; you don’t hide behind them.”

And I try not to busy my mind with too many thoughts about the past or what could have been.

I wake up most mornings feeling refreshed and well rested, with an excitement about the day. And as long as you can say that, I think you’re doing OK.

“As a man who has been trying to run into you for months, let me assure you how rare it is that two specific people’s paths will cross.”

I was really taken with this one theory that states that everything that is possible happens. That means that when you flip a quarter, it doesn’t come down heads or tails. It comes up heads and tails. Every time you flip a coin and it comes up heads, you are merely in the universe where the coin came up heads.