This time last year, I was rushing from my apartment in Murray Hill to a boutique in Soho, silently urging my cabbie to step on it as the back of my knees drenched his vinyl seats with sweat. I was headed to a book signing to meet one of my favorite storytellers, Emily Giffin, and The Husband (then fiance) was meeting me there so we could head straight to a benefit afterward, then to the wine bar with friends. (Just typing that sentence from our new home in the suburbs, where a wild night means TWO episodes of Tosh.0 and a vodka tonic, makes me tired. Big tree fall hard.) P.S.–note my red face and chest in the above picture. I was ridiculously nervous (as opposed to my baseline nervous, which is not to be shrugged at), but EG could not have been more gracious in the face of my borderline stalking. She signed my copy of Something Blue along with the “something blue” for my wedding–my shoes–while TH sat patiently nearby, taking pictures and not rolling his eyes.

So it’s rather fitting that this past weekend, exactly a year later, I took my seat in the theater for the movie adaptation of one of Giffin’s books, Something Borrowed. Twice. The Sis and I were booked to see it Sunday afternoon, but with a work-free Friday, I just couldn’t wait. I previewed the movie solo, then confessed this transgression on our way into the theater Sunday. The Sis gasped at my betrayal, then recovered and asked if it was good. And for the next two hours, we passed popcorn and M&Ms back and forth as we watched one of our favorite stories play out on the screen (with minor alterations), gleefully roaring at and repeating to each other the same parts as only our matching personalities can: lines everyone else missed, like “I did” and “That doesn’t sound right.”

In the aftermath of viewing that tale of a happy ending that only came after heartache, The Sis and I went to dinner last night with one of our longtime besties. She had a sparkler on her finger and a wedding in her future, and this cause for celebration was sweetly gratifying for me since we had navigated the treacherous terrains of college and the Manhattan dating scene together. For two years, we shared a shoebox fourth-floor walkup and hungover Saturdays, crazy nights out and greasy diner deliveries, laughter and broken hearts. We had coexisted among the high highs and low lows that only New York can bestow upon and hurl at a Type A, late-twenties girl who is having fun but sure wouldn’t mind losing the losers and finding The One any time now, thank you.

As I watched the movie, and listened to my friend tell her engagement story, I was faced once again with the reality of hard-won happy endings. Of complications along the way, what I used to see as pitfalls and obstacles that stood in between me and happiness–and how I secretly believed that they were red flags warning me that the joyful resolution paired with a catchy song didn’t exist. Not for me. Like Rachel, I had “no real faith in my own happiness.”

And to think, now, that without all of those trenches, I never would have gotten here. And never would have had the heart to truly love, to know The Real Thing when it found me. To feel the profound gratitude I do now, every day. I used to want to be one of those people who skated through life without difficulty or conflict, a person for whom everything came easy. There were plenty of them around me, and they seemed so carefree! My own parents, perhaps like yours, met in college and married at twenty-two, and I thought I would inherit their story like I did their DNA.  Then years went by and my singleness remained–and I realized that my bitterness quotient was about to explode if I didn’t tend to the life I was actually living rather than the one I had planned. As I set about doing just that, I began to see that none of us ever make it through this world without scars, even high school sweethearts. But now I know that there are no good stories without the messy parts. Tales without complications are rarely retold. Pain is one of grace’s greatest disguises, and how thankful I am for the transformation that always comes along with it. (And for the fact that I didn’t marry the guy I was dating at twenty-two or become a mother shortly thereafter…yikes. And amen.)