SACRAMENT

I once heard a question that both unnerved me and made things startlingly clear: is it more important to love someone with all your heart…

…or to be loved by someone with all of theirs?

We all want to fall head-over-heels in love, and we all want the other person to love us back exactly the same. But that’s not usually the way it turns out.

In fact, I think that’s rarely the way it turns out. Both people may be in love, but it always seems one person is more in love than the other.

So… if you had to choose, which would it be?

Love someone else passionately and completely, even if they don’t feel as powerfully as you?

Or be loved passionately and completely, even if you don’t feel exactly the same towards them?

I thought I knew the answer when I heard the question.

Then I found out years later that no… I didn’t know the answer at all.

PRESENT DAY:

I sat across from the Rolling Stone editor in his office overlooking midtown Manhattan.

I’d arrived 15 minutes early for my meeting. I thought I was there to interview for some lowly staff position. Layout grunt… gofer… toilet scrubber.

Actually, I hoped and dreamed it was a staff position. As desperate as I was, I would have taken an unpaid internship.

I mean, come on. It was Rolling Stone.

Glen the editor sat across the desk from me, hands folded, serene. He was bald on top with curly hair around the sides, and he wore black, plastic-frame hipster glasses. His personal sense of style was somewhere between 70’s Rocker and College Professor.

“Kaitlyn Reynolds. Finally we meet. Good to put a face with the voice over the phone.”

“Same here. Nice to meet you, too.”

“Journalism degree from Syracuse, right?”

“Yes.”

“When did you graduate?”

“A year ago.” I put on a polite smile. “Almost to the day.”

“I read the pieces you emailed me. Not bad. Not great… but not bad.”

Not great… but not bad.

My temper spiked a little bit. I’m a bit of a hothead sometimes.

But I calmed myself down by thinking, When an editor at Rolling Stone says your stuff isn’t bad, ignore the ‘not great’ part.

“Well, I’m still working on building up my portfolio – ”

Glen interrupted me, ignoring what I was saying. “There was something I especially liked, a short story you wrote for the Syracuse literary magazine.”