I've never seen the musical Wicked, I've only read part of the book, and only really know two songs: Defying Gravity and For Good. Both songs have had a really profound impact on me, to say the least. For Good has a line in it that says, "because I knew you, I have been changed for good."
There have been people in my life who hurt me. There have been people who made me ache, cry, and scream. There have been people I wished I'd never met (at the time). But I sincerely believe [now] that every single person, regardless of how much they have made me hurt, has changed me for the better. You don't realize it at the time, but the bad people who come into your life always end up serving a higher purpose. I once used the analogy of putting Christmas lights on a tree. You can't really see what it looks like during the process, but when you flip the switch on, it looks beautiful. Life is a lot like this; all about the bigger picture. Ever wonder why art history focuses so much on the Impressionists? Because there has never been a period in history where art has created such an apt metaphor for life. What I mean by this is, take any Impressionist painting and look at a small section of it. It doesn't make any sense. It's just brush strokes and dots in different colors. Look at the entire painting, you know exactly what it's supposed to be. But if you were to look at say, a Jackson Pollock painting, it looks the same no matter what section of it you look at. Not that I'm knocking the Abstract movement or anything. There is perhaps no better example of this than the works of Monsieur Monet. Look at a tiny portion of his painting, and you're clueless. Look at the entire thing and it's unmistakeably Water Lillies.
Life is made up of millions of tiny brush strokes. Everyone who marches into your life is armed with a paintbrush, and they paint their distinctive colors on the canvas that is your life. You might think your life is shades of pink, and get upset when someone with burnt orange comes in and smears the garish color all over your pretty pink life. You can try to remove this seemingly hideous color, but nothing's going to take it off. What you need to do is refocus. Take a step back. Look a little more closely, because if you do, you'll see all the purples and blues and yellows and oranges and reds. And everything looks so beautiful you could cry, because it all makes sense. Life flows like water from the tap when you douse it with the CLR of perspective. It might not make sense now, but one day it will. One day, you'll plug in the lights, and the tree will light up, and it just might make your heart break with happiness. Because there's nothing in life so wonderful as a finished project. And while a human being us always a work in progress, it always helps to see how far we've come.
I always hear people say "I wish I had never met so-and-so," It makes me sad, because they're still focusing on too narrow of a section of their lives. Yeah, right after Angel Wings broke up with me, I was angry and hurt. And I'm sure that I wished with all of my might that I had never met him; never gone over to AK's apartment with Gina that night, never gotten his number. But honestly, that's silly to the point of absurdity. I don't regret being with him; quite the contrary. I was very much in love with him and thouroughly enjoyed being in a relationship with him. We just grew apart. It wasn't meant to be. Yes, he had his faults, but all in all he was a good person amd it would be entirely wrong of me to write mean things about him. Such a thing would merely reflect my own jealousies and insecurities about myself rather than his personal shortcomings. No, we didn't go about breaking up the right way, but he treated me very well when we were together, and I truly wish him nothing but the best. I was hurt for a long time after we broke up. But I don't regret one single minute of those nearly six months we were together. He enhanced my life when he was in it, but it benefitted me much more when he left it, much more than he anticipated, I'm sure. I know Angel Wings is a smart person, and I know he could see that us breaking up would ultimately benefit is both. He could see a larger part of the canvas than I could. And I thank him for his decision, because it taught me to zoom out, as well.
So we may hurt, we may cry. We may scream and shake and wonder why things didn't go exactly the way we want. It's ok to do that. We wouldn't be human if it weren't. But we must remember to zoom out, look at the bigger picture if you will. Red and orange don't look good right next to each other, no. But just wait. In time, you'll see the whole other spectrum of colors there.
To anyone I've ever cried over, said I hated, said I wished I'd never met: I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. Because, "I've been changed for the better. Because I knew you, I have been changed for good."
