Epilogue: Sanctuary from the Storm
Epilogue: Sanctuary from the Storm
Life was always about survival. The focus was on making it through one more day with enough groceries, one more night with just a few hours of sleep, one more walk home from school without being approached by the dirty alcoholic pervert that lived in the taupe trailer on the left.
Selfishness was a way of life, a way to get by, and without it, I’m not sure I could have made it through. The most unattractive, unwanted trait of human nature became a means of survival for me.
When I did survive, and went to college, and was welcomed into a family, and survival was no longer an if, but a guarantee, it was hard to let go. I’m not sure I’ll ever let go. I’d like to think otherwise, but a part of my thinks I will always be a selfish person, to some extent, whether I’m proud of it or not. I’ve made progress. There have been bumps in the road and god knows I’ve slipped up a few million times, but I’d like to think I’ve gotten better.
With all of Taylor’s faults, I will never see him as selfish. He’s a brat, much of the time, and a complete fool, more often than he’d like to admit, but selfish he isn’t. He’s had his moments, but I’ve never met someone who is more willing to be there for you when you need it. I look back on some of the lower moments of his life, and some of the times he’s hurt me, and it’s hard to even remember them. He makes up for it ten fold in the end. In the end, he’s always put me first, and although that always made me so nervous in the past, now I find comfort in knowing there will always be one person that will always be looking out for me more than I am myself.
I needed him. I needed his quirky ways, and his screaming fits, and his passionate, loving moments of affection. I needed his cheesy romance, and his all too common combative attitude, and his inappropriate conservative jokes. And I needed his love, and his honesty, and his commitment. I have never met someone more committed than Taylor Hanson. I needed his playful approach to life, and the starring role he gave me in the movie he seems to think his life is being made into. He brought the life out in me- he made me laugh. It’s hard to really remember laughing before him.
He’s complete perfection, for me at least. And while he’s right, we’ll never be the perfect couple, and we’ll never have the perfect love story, I believe that God created him to be exactly what I needed in my life.
He extended his hand when I most needed it, pulled me out of the storm that was swallowing me whole, and brought me home. Whether we be with his family, our family, in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a small empty apartment in Harlem, or yes, huddled around a gas lantern in a cramped tent in the middle of Zimbabwe, he will always be home. He will always be the sanctuary from the storm.