What are the odds?

"You wanna do someone else
So you should be by yourself
Instead of here with me
Secretly"
- "Secretly"
Skunk Anansie

Rainy Labor Day Weekend, 2004 - cleaning my apartment and consequently making a bigger mess out of myself. A craving for brownies came from nowhere. The grocery store was just across the street, I would be back in minutes - so I left wearing no makeup, with my messy hair tucked under a baseball hat.
I walked over to the baskets in Harris Teeter, and there he was.
There he was, there she was.
We had been broken up just a few weeks at that point, and he had to be shopping at the grocery store with her at that exact moment.
We caught each other's eye, she clutched his arm and looked at me with a sideways glance.
Small talk ensued, mostly me incessantly babbling about wanting to bake brownies. After this, I thought, they better be the best brownies I have ever had.
Upon leaving the store, I called a friend to relay my tale.
"How could this happen," I wailed, "I mean, what are the odds?"
His reply?
"Evidently 100% percent!"

Delicate

"And why do you sing Hallelujah
If it means nothing to you
Why do you sing with me at all?"
- "Delicate"
Damien Rice

For over a year, I managed a high-end cosmetics counter in a department store. To pass the time (among other things), I played music behind the counter. The store played its own typical Musak, which thankfully we could not hear, as cosmetics was the noisiest department.
Whenever I found myself in the Men's Department, or Customer Service, I considered myself grateful that I wasn't subjected to endless hours of holiday music, or Gordon Lightfoot tunes.
I generally played upbeat music - eighties hits, Madonna, soundtrack - as it tended to attract customers and generated business. Occasionally, I chose something different, such as Johnny Cash, and appreciated the strange looks I received from passerbys.
I had gotten out of a whirlwind romance when I bought the Damien Rice CD. It seemed the perfect CD to wallow to, and I played it incessantly. Eight hours a day, for a week or so. The same maudlin songs, lacking hope and joy.
Finally, my counter-mate, a woman (about 60 years old), took the CD out of the stereo declaring, "I can't take this CD anymore! It is so depressing and so miserable."
Which brought me back to a moment in college...
After playing Chicago's "Look Away" for the twentieth-or-so time, my roommate threatened me - "Turn this off, or I'll have Pete run it over with his truck."
Lesson being?
The maudlin music works for the person who is choosing to play it, but rarely for the people forced to listen to it.

No One Said It Would Be Easy

"No one said it would be easy
But no one said it'd be this hard
No one said it would be easy
No one thought we'd come this far"
- "No One Said It Would Be Easy"
Sheryl Crow

I often thought my life should have a soundtrack, as if music should cue certain moments. My iPod has a knack of choosing songs that mirror a moment, as if someone has created the aforementioned background music for my life.
Yesterday, when I wrote that e-mail, it chose "Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough". I always believed that if you loved someone, everything else would follow suit. Distance and differences could never be a barrier.
Then you came along and everything changed.
Sometimes love isn't enough. Life has a way of creating situations that even the purest love cannot overcome.
I thought I was doing the right thing. Everyone tells me I am.
"Just give it time."
No one said it would be easy, but no one said it would be this hard.