On Love & Hope & Sitcoms

(Contains spoilers for the season 8 finale of “How I Met Your Mother.” In fact, I talk a lot about the show in general. If that bores you...oh well, it's my blog!)

I’ve been watching “How I Met Your Mother” from the first episode, and I was absolutely thrilled with the conclusion of ‘Something New,’ the Season 8 finale. So much so that, within eight hours of airing, I'd watched the full episode twice, and the ending reveal two more times. (And then another two after work) I told one of my roommates, who is a season behind, that the ending is worth the wait. And not him waiting to buy the DVD when it comes out, but worth my wait, eight years invested in the show.

I identify quite a bit with Ted. Granted, in a lot of ways we're very different, with different experiences. But as I watch the show, I find myself dealing with a lot of the same troubles, asking a lot of the same questions. I'm also single, past the age where I wanted to be married, watching my friends all getting married, even clinging to certain possibilities long after they moved on from me. (Although, at 8 years pining for Robin, Ted does have me beat.) We’ve both had career struggles, difficulties finding direction, and, at times, we’ve begun to lose hope that we’ll ever meet this elusive woman.

So it shouldn't be too big of a shock for me to say that I almost feel my romantic fate is somehow connected to Ted's. I realize that a tv show really has no bearing on my life happenings, but that doesn't keep me from feeling that something big is just around the corner. And not just for Ted. True, I have gone and looked up Cristin Milioti's picture a few times since last night, and one time watching her reveal, I started to tear up, imagining the first time I look at my bride-to-be, knowing who she is.

I'm sure that the connection is all in my head, and within a year, I'm in for either a letdown, or a big crazy random happenstance that it all plays out. I keep looking at the circumstances of the show, and so much of it gives me encouragement - Stella's speech about how Ted's love is coming "as fast as she can," Ted's monologue to his future wife, neither of them realizing they're only 45 days away from meeting. Even as we watch now both characters, hours from meeting each other, both are going in blindly - their worlds are about to collide, and change, and neither has any idea. Both are coming from a place of pain (Ted watching his ex girlfriend marry his best friend, and the "girl with the yellow umbrella" was in a relationship 42 days earlier, we don't know if that's ended or not), but the paths they've been on all this time are finally converging, and they're none the wiser.

Which gets me thinking - I could be 45 days from meeting the love of my life. Or 56 hours. Or 2 years. All I know is that God has promised me she's out there and, just like Stella said, "she's coming as fast as she can."

It gives me hope. And hope is worth holding onto.