Cross Stitch

While leaving our last set location today, I noticed an antique mall across the road that I hadn't been to in years. The last time I went in that store, I was very in love with a man who was not who he said he was. This statement could be said about a lot of people, but I mean it in the most seriously intense way. Everything Aaron told me (including the accent he told it to me in) was a lie except his name. But I didn't know that yet. I remember exactly what I was thinking to myself as I was walking towards the front doors of this shop, years before. I was blissfully happy, and thinking that I was carrying around the most wonderful secret. Like a physical thing I could carry, as if it were a purse or a book I hid under my coat. The most wonderful secret was that the most wonderful man in the world loved me back. ME. Why had he chosen me? What had I done to deserve to be the one woman who ended up with him? I had no clue, but I felt loved. Truly loved and in love and lucky and more excited about my future than I had ever been.

Fast forward a few years. I parked in front of that store today and decided to go in. As I walked from the car to the door, I thought of that feeling I had walking to the door years before. I wandered through the booths, a little sad that I didn't feel that same way anymore. Then I saw this framed cross stitch and almost started laughing in the middle of the store. How appropriate in this moment! Little Pinocchio. If the man I loved then had been Pinocchio, his nose would have wrapped around that dingy strip mall at least eight times. All Pinocchio wanted though was to be a real boy. I think the same was true for Aaron. I don't think he told lies to hurt people or steal from people. He just wanted legs that weren't made of wood, a jacket that wasn't made of flowered paper and a hat that wasn't made of bread. He desperately wanted to be something other than what he was. I'm not saying I excuse his behavior. I just understand it better now....because of a cross stitch of a character from an Italian fable that was later made into a Disney movie that I found hanging in the corner of an antique mall in Franklin, Tennessee. Ha. Oh, life.