little bitty girl

Relationships are awkward at the best of times. Relationships when one is a teenager, pimply, gangly and unsure is something that one often likes to forget. Mine was not one of them.

Alex was my first love and high school sweetheart. He was one of my first few friends I made, when I first moved to this country. I remember actually hating him when I first met him. I have a habit of doing that with the people I fall in love with. For your information, I have only ever been in love with two people in my life, Alex and Stefan.

I became friends with Alex's older sister, not knowing that they were related. When I found out, I gave her a big hug and told her how sorry I was that they were related. It was quite funny.

We dated for about two years and a bit. I am sure we had some horrid times, as teenagers are usually full of angst and emotion but for some reason, I only remember the good ones.

Alex was my harbour. I had a more than difficult last few teenage years and he was there in very hard times. He was the first person who I ever felt comfortable enough to cry in front of. At the end of it though, we both knew that we made better friends than we were as a couple. It wasn't easy to work that friendship bit out and somehow we did.

I remember when he first told me about Ophelie. He had dated a little and I, a lot, since our breakup. He was completely different. So calm and at peace. Alex, who was voted to most likely to be a millionaire before he was 30 in our high school, was for once not fidgety or more fidgety than usual. Not fidgety because there was something in Ophelie that was a balm to him and fidgety because he was always flying, trying to work the long distance thing between Toronto and Paris.

We still saw each other once in awhile. Not as often as we did, as we obviously had our own lives to live by then. In the early days, I would ask him advise about the pros and cons of dating Stefan. He would say things like - "You've never been crazy about anyone like this!" or "The man doesn't seem to care how many shoes you buy....You must see the good in that."

And they are very different, Stefan and Alex and yet the same. They both are caring, loyal, honorable men. They both were unfortunate enough to have been involved with me. Stefan gets extra saint-hood points for actually marrying me.

I always have this theory that if you're lucky enough to have a good first boyfriend, you tend to want to hold out for the real thing. I am so happy that I did.

Last year, Alex finally took the leap of faith and moved to France to be with the one he loved. Alex, the guy who calculated every move and every penny spent, went to a country where he could not speak the language fluently nor had a prospective job. He learnt to cook and travelled Europe this past year. On December 17th, Alex and Ophelie were married in Paris. We both got engaged and married within months of each other!

They looked so beautiful and happy. Ophelie looked resplendent in that totally French, naturally sophisticated way and Alex looked like he'd been crying (with joy, of course!).

And I think, how lucky we both have been - to have loved each other, to be friends and to find our true loves.

I haven't yet had a chance to meet Ophelie but I am very excited to meet her when they come home in the summer or early Fall.