"Out of the Rubble"

As I sit at my desk, eating E.L. Fudge cookies, I look up and a little over to the right, and I see the quote I printed out on the funky designed scrapbook paper. “Happiness is never stopping to think if you are.” How true that statement really is. When I first read that quote toward the beginning of fall semester, I was taken aback. I knew that I had entered college with two completely opposite versions of myself: the Laura who everyone was familiar with, who laughed whole-heartedly, who smiled bright, who just had this fantastic aura about her; and the Laura who was broken, who held every single emotion inside her because she was too scared of getting hurt again, who was numb to all pain and feeling, who only cried when she was completely alone. It was always a constant struggle between the two, almost like a tug-of-war. They ran parallel to each other, never meeting; all I had wanted to do was fuse the two together so I could feel human again.

Then I met Larry. It wasn’t on accident; it was just supposed to happen. I don’t think I have ever met another person who is like me in so many ways. “My favorite part of the day is when you and me become we.” We are right, plain and simple; we just work. In the beginning, I had so many walls up still; I wouldn’t budge from the way I was, which was indifferent and nonchalant about basically everything. I tried to not let things faze me, but I pushed him on purpose. I pushed his buttons just to see if he was truthful when he said he would be the one to break down all the walls and be my knight in shining armor. Well, he didn’t lie. I fell for him, despite my desperate intentions not to fall again.

There was just something about him, though…something that made me want to do this all over again. Maybe it was the way he made me think differently, or the way he wanted me to be the best Laura I could be. Maybe it was just that he actually gave a crap about me, truly and deeply cared, and always wanted the best for me. I feel like I owe it to him; God, he helped pull me out of the rubble I was buried in for so long. Even though he was the one who grabbed my hand and lifted me out, I still was able to stand on my own two feet without him. But that was the difference: I didn’t want to stand there without him. “I could conquer the world with one hand, only if you were holding the other.”

I learned so much this first semester in college—like how to not procrastinate the night before on a 2500 word term paper; how the past is just that: the past; and how I’m not going to get everything I want—but I feel like I would have never been able to accomplish half the stuff I did concerning my own mental and emotional health without Lar. I don’t know if I could have done it without him. I have no idea what is going to happen tomorrow, the next day, the next week, or even the next year, but it doesn’t matter, because we have now, which is what matters the most. In now, I have exactly what I love and I have learned what I needed to learn. I am not a fusion of the two Lauras, I am a matured, altered, put-back-together with a few visible cracks, and better self. I stopped wondering if I am happy, because if Sondreal is right in saying that happiness is never stopping to think if you are, then I am happy. Completely, truly, freely, beautifully.