The one that got away

The one that got away
Source: The Manila Times
By: Mark J. Macapagal

In your life, you'll make note of a lot of people.
Ones with whom you shared
something special, ones who will always mean
something. There's the one you
first kissed, the one you first loved, the one you
lost your virginity to, the
one you put on a pedestal, the one you're with...
and the one that got away.

Who is the one that got away? I guess it's that
person with who everything was
great, everything was perfect, but the timing was
just wrong. There was no
fault in the person, there was no flaw in the
chemistry, but the cards just
didn't fall the right way, I suppose.

I believe in the fact that ending up with someone,
finding a longtime partner
that is, does not lie merely in the other person. I
can actually argue that an
equal part, or maybe even the greater part, has to
do with the matter of
timing. It has to do with you being ready to settle
down and commit to someone
in a way that goes beyond the little niceties of
giddy romance.

How often have you gone through it without even
realizing it? When you're not
ready to commit in that mature manner, it doesn't
matter who you're with, it
just doesn't work. Small problems become big;
unconsequentials become
dealbreakers simply because you're not ready and
it shows. It's not that you
and the person you're with are no good; it's just
that it's not yet right, and
little things become the flashpoint of that fact.

Then one day you're ready. You really are. And
when this happens you'll be ready
to settle down with someone. He or she may not
be the most perfect, they might
not be the brightest star of romance to ever have
burned in your life, but
it'll work because you're ready. It'll work because
it's the right time and
you'll make it work. And it'll make sense, it really
will.

So that day comes when you're finally making
sense of things, and you find
yourself to be a different person. Things are
different, your approach is
different, you finally understand who you are and
what you want, and you've
become ready because the time has truly arrived.
And mind you, there's no
telling when this day will come. Hopefully you're
single but you could be in a
long-term relationship, you could be married with
three kids, it doesn't
matter. All you know is that you've changed, and
for some reason, the one that
got away, is the first person you think about.

You'll think about them because you'll
wonder, "What if they were here today?"
You'll wonder, "What if we were together now, with
me as I am and not as I
was?"
That's what the one that got away is. The
biggest "What if?" you'll have in your
life.

If you're married, you'll just have to accept the fact
that the one that got
away, got away. Believe me, no matter how fairy
tale you think your marriage
is, this can happen to the best of us. But hopefully
you're mature enough to
realize that you're already with the one you're with
and this is just another
test of your commitment, one which will just
strengthen your marriage when you
get past it. Sure, you'll think about him/her every
so often, but it's alright.
It's never nice to live with a "might have been," but
it happens.

Maybe the one that got away is the one who's
already married. In which case it's
the same thing. You just have to accept and know
that your memories of that
person will probably bring a nice little smile to your
lips in the future when
you're old and gray and reminiscing.

But if neither of that is the case, then it's
different.
What do you do if it's
not yet too late?

Simple...find him, find her. Because the very
existence of a "one that got away"
means that you'll always wonder, what if you got
that one?

Ask him out to coffee, ask her out to a movie, it
doesn't matter if you've
dropped in from out of nowhere. You'd be surprised,
you just might be "the one
that got away" as well for the person who is
your "the one that got away."

You might drop in from out of nowhere and it won't
make a difference. If the
timing is finally right, it'll all just fall into
place
somehow and you know,
I'm thinking, it would be a great feeling, in the end,
to be able to say to
someone,

"Hey you, you're the one that ALMOST got away."