True Loves

Tonight while cleaning out all the stuff I've shoved under my bed over the past year, I found my favorite photograph of myself with my old boyfriend. Not G, but one a couple before him, the boy I was with during college and for a year and a half afterward. The picture was taken the day I graduated from college. I was sitting in the football stadium with the other members of my class, none of whom I knew since I was graduating before all my other film school friends. Todd snuck up into the stands to surprise me, and we had the guy sitting behind us take our picture. In it we both look purely, simply happy, and deeply at peace, which is something we rarely were. I remember showing it to my step mom after it was developed, and she told me that she thought Todd looked really proud of me, and when I look at the picture, it makes me smile to be able to see that. I'm so grateful that I have that picture, some little bit of proof of something. The fact that Todd is still in my life is greater proof of that something, whatever exactly that something is. He is someone I know without a doubt I can count on to care about me. Even when I am wicked to him, even when I ignored him for months on end because I was in love with someone else, even when I'm dreadfully dull, I know that he's there, and he'll never not want me in his life. When we were dating, he used to tell me that he worried that if we ever broke up, he would lose my friendship, and I cruelly assured him that he most definitely would, so he'd better not break up with me. I'm so glad I wasn't able to keep my word on that. There are very few (in fact, truly only a few, as in three) people in my life who I can be completely honest with about my feelings and my state of mind, who I know I won't scare away or repulse when I admit that I'm having a hard time. When I tell him things, when I show him my vulnerable, aching side, he doesn't judge me. He formed his opinion of me long, long ago and he's never changed his mind or decided I was no longer worthwhile. This isn't to say that our friendship is perfect, because it's actually quite flawed in many ways. But the relationships that I've tried to make perfect have fallen out of my life, and this one has remained. I can hardly think of anything better then having something like that.