One

Recently someone clicked a link to this blog and became my 2,000^th reader this year.  For some reason the difference between 1,999 and 2,000 seems significant.  Everything adds up but sometimes one person makes a big difference – that is the point I want to try to make here.

When I was eighteen years old, in my second semester at Loyola University, where I was diligently trying to be an international studies major, I would write short personal essays and post them on Facebook.  I knew several of my friends read them and I figured that a couple other Facebook acquaintances might be reading them as well.  Writing these little essays was almost always the most fulfilling part of my week and almost always occurred when I was supposed to be doing something that was practical and that I found miserable – like studying the philosophy of logic.  

In January of that school year I wrote and posted an essay about how I felt like most of life was about waiting – waiting for class to end, waiting for the work day to be over, waiting for the right time to say the right thing, waiting to be free to truly live.  At that point I was daily looking ahead at the direction my life seemed to be headed in and seeing nothing but days and years through which I would have to patiently wait until I arrived at some vague and distant point in the future when I could start being happy.  And what I mean is that I wanted to write but it didn’t seem like a practical thing to do with my life so I was waiting to do what made me happy and was instead doing what made socially acceptable sense.

It turned out that one of my professors was one the Facebook acquaintances reading my essays.  I found this out when I received a message from him in response to the essay I had written about waiting.  He advised me to live for myself, not for society.  And while that was good advice that I think most people learn to be true on their own in time, it was an offhanded closing remark he made that changed everything.  He wrote, “If you ever stop writing, you’ll be doing yourself and all who read you a disservice.  Really.”

That was the first time that someone made me feel like my writing mattered.  And that is important because if I believe that something matters I will pursue it with all my heart.  And so I did.  I left Loyola and started studying writing.  And for the first time in my life I was no longer waiting for happiness to begin; I was living it every day.  Three years later I am in New York City getting my MFA in Creative Writing.  And while it may have taken a lot of work and the support of various people along the way, I can tell you that that one Facebook message from my professor made a difference.  One person can change everything.

There is a writing exercise that I often do which involves making a list entitled “Things I’ve Been Told.”  The things that appear on this list are an example of how everything adds up but one person can make all the difference – one person can change everything.   

A high school classmate once told me, “Molly, you’re too smart for a boyfriend.”

My first boyfriend once told me, “Sex with you didn’t mean anything.  It could have been anyone.”

My most recent ex-boyfriend told me he broke up with me because sex with me was “too emotionally loaded” because he felt “too much pressure, considering [my] history.”  The history he was referring to was that I had been raped.

These things add up in the worst way.  Such people take a toll. 

Then one night I found myself in bed with someone new.  He was kissing my shoulder and then he was kissing my lips and then when I opened my eyes and saw him looking back into mine, smiling, I had to fight back tears.  Suddenly, as his gaze held mine, I was realizing that this was the first time I’d ever seen someone look me in the eyes during sex. 

Things add up and I wish now that I could take back the choices I made to have sex with the men that I did.  I wish I didn’t remember the way they told me to keep my eyes closed or the way I would open my eyes and see them looking at anything but my face.  And it is not even that I thought I didn’t deserve any better.  It’s just that I didn’t think anyone better existed.  Now I know better. 

I have a habit of telling people about a line from an essay I was assigned to read in my very first nonfiction writing workshop I took three years ago.  I can’t now remember what the essay was called or who wrote it but I can never forget that the line made the claim that people fall in love at the moment when their life is terrorized with possibilities.  The idea was that people don’t like choices and falling in love enables them to believe that love and the life they lead when they’re in it is not a choice but is simply inevitable.  People don’t want to believe in “the many;” they want to believe in “the one.”

I don’t know why I always make a point of telling people about this essay.  I don’t even particularly agree with what it says.  The most recent time I told someone about this essay was this past Monday.  The discussion of the essay led to a discussion on whether or not either of us believed in “the one.”  Neither of us did.  I said that I think that each person in the world probably has five or ten people who could be equally right for them, that in the end it is just a matter of timing.  He replied that he thought there was probably 500,000 people in the world who could be right for any one person, that it’s just a matter of how many of them one can meet and when. 

Now that I’ve written this blog entry I realize that I no longer agree with I said just this past Monday – and maybe I didn’t even really agree with it then.  Mark Twain wrote that “Truth is stranger than fiction because fiction is obliged to stick to the possibilities.”  Maybe the strange truth is that there is one right person out of all the possibilities. 

Each of our lives is an ever-expanding collection of people and experiences, all adding up to make us who we are, but sometimes it only takes one person to change everything – or even just change one very important thing.  One person to tell us we matter.  One person to look at us and see us for us for who we really are and not look away.  Out of all the possible people one can meet in the world, I think I am lucky to have met a couple good ones.  And as one person out of all the many people in world, I feel lucky to have people read the writing I post on this blog more than 2,000 times this year.  And even if there really are 500,000 right people for me in the world, I think the point is that I would be wonderfully lucky to meet just one.