Another kind of Love
“I know you’ve only ever known your father and me. And I love Jack, because he is your father. But there’s another kind of love, Amanda. One that gives you the courage to be better than you are, not less than you are. One that makes you feel that anything is possible. I want you to know that you can have that. I want you to hold out for it.”
~Adrienne Willis, Nights in Rodanthe
by Nicholas Sparks
Appropriately enough, this movie was released exactly three months after the ending of my 21-year marriage. To date, it’s the only movie I saw at a theater more than once. I actually saw it on three separate occasions, taking a different girlfriend with me each time.
I related with it on so many levels. Being alone for the first time in my adult life. Having yet to find out who I really was. A product of a looming divorce. A mother of an extremely strong-willed daughter who would have her say regardless. Never to be last… a woman who fought to maintain her dream that a true unconditional love did in fact exist, somewhere out there. Hey, it might’ve been a dream – but it was my dream.
When you do find that kind of love, you want your loved ones to know that it’s out there for them as well. You want them to hold out for it.
Another kind of love.
One that gives you the courage to be better than you are, not less than you are. One that makes you feel that anything is possible.
Hope is my safe haven
I went to see the new Nicholas Sparks movie Safe Haven over the weekend. There’s something about Sparks’ books and movies that have always drawn me to them – I’m fairly certain the ever-hopeless romantic in me would be the biggest reason. I also love being able to closely relate with the locality he incorporates into his stories. Sparks is from New Bern, NC and he always chooses a place within close proximity to his hometown for the story’s local. Safe Haven was filmed in the coastal town of Southport, NC – a town that’s dear to my heart. We used to vacation at the beach right up from Southport, and even rode the same ferry they took in the movie when we visited the Southport Aquarium.
Although a little slow… it was a good movie. I have this terrible knack of comparing all of Sparks’ story lines with The Notebook, which set the bar at an unprecedented height for any subsequently written stories.
Back in 2008 when I began my journey to build a new life, I adorned the theater on three separate occasions to see Nights in Rodanthe. My girlfriends teased me relentlessly for this – but that movie was (and still is) mesmerizing to me. I related so closely with it for several reasons; the middle age of the characters, the setting of the beautiful Outer Banks beach with the horses, and the fact that, from time to time, love can in fact resurface it’s pretty little head for a second chance. To this day, Nights in Rodanthe still remains one of my favorites. I even followed the real-life story of the house (Serendipity) being relocated to a safer location to avoid erosion from the ocean a few years back. I’d wished for the opportunity to visit it in person before that happened.
Two steps forward, three steps back, as they say. There is an absolute downside of being a romantic at heart. Combine said trait with a Pisces nature and a breakup and (BAM!) it can quite literally be a recipe for disaster. I know I need to get my head out of the clouds for a moment and realize there is nothing perfect out there – nor are there any fairytales, as much as I’d love to believe there are. I guess if I had to sum total it all in a nutshell… hope is what I derive from these stories.
And I’m always up for a little bit of that.
Life of Bon 
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