Can't put your arms around a ghost

It took me 31 years to have an epiphany. My very first one. It’s such an obvious one too, it hardly qualifies, but I’ll tell you anyway, if you’d like.

There is no answer to life because everyone has a different question. The best thing you can do is find someone who has the same question as you and then fall in love with them.

Whenever anyone told me they were lonely and wanted a boyfriend/girlfriend, I could never understand that feeling. I’d never been without one since I discovered that boys could do more than call you names and push you over, for one thing. But on the other hand, lonely or not, it plain doesn’t make sense.

I know what it’s like to feel lonely for someone in particular. But how can you feel the lack of someone you haven’t even met?

Then I met Bruce and I think I understand. I was never looking for happiness, because I didn’t know that existed either.

What I’m trying to say is that people spend their whole lives taking aim and missing, aiming and missing, because they only have a general sense of what they’re taking aim at. You can have the husband, the job, the city, the children, the money, but that’s it. Materialistically speaking, you’ve achieved your goal, so you can go ahead and die now.

Obviously not. You don’t know what you’re living for until you find it, and then you discover that it was never in the thing itself. When you got that bottle of Channel no. 5 for Christmas, did the joy end there? No, you had to slather it on every morning and then one day annoy me with your stench at the IMAX theatre while I was trying to be suitably impressed by animated, naked, gold-plated Angelina Jolie in 3D.

It’s the same with love – once you’re in it, that’s where the journey begins and not a moment sooner. You may as well throw out the maps now because you’ll never arrive at your destination; all you’ll want is just one more day with that person, one more look, one more feeling, just five more minutes, I’ll be right there…For as long as you can manage.

Though you probably figured that one out a long time ago, hey? Well nobody ever said an epiphany had to be original.