Despite what many may think, often the very best matches I make don't just happen with a snap of a finger. The pathway from single life to marital bliss is rarely a straight line. Additionally, even when I know two people absolutely belong together, sometimes it's like a jigsaw puzzle trying to figure out how to get them together, like Holly and Michael. Things happen out of my control and as much as it irks me, mortals will ultimately make their own decisions and some of those decisions I simply can't predict.
Jim Halpert has always been one of my favorites. The kid has a good heart. Growing up, he wasn't always the goofy charismatic guy you'll see in the documentary. He was actually painfully shy during most of his young childhood. His two older brothers picked on him all the time and his baby sister couldn't join forces with him quite yet.
As he hit puberty and shot up a foot taller than everyone else, he began to gain some confidence. He was able to let his sense of humor come through. He made the basketball team, which helped his social status. But that shy kid was still in there, which if you ask me, helped him. He never got too full of himself and was generally kind to everyone around him, even if he did play a few pranks. Like I said, the kid has a good heart.
Throughout high school he went on dates with girls, kissed a few of them, (maybe touched some bases or whatever the term is. I don't understand mortal baseball). But he never really had one girl in particular—not one that stuck. I think internally he had a list in his head of what he wanted, even in high school, and none of these girls quite matched up.
The same happened in college. He had fun, no doubt. But underneath his humor and his charm, was a sensitive, hopeless romantic. He had a few girlfriends, but the relationships never lasted more than a few months before he got bored or found a reason to end it. He had a hard time letting just any girl in, at least not fully.
He graduated college and began working at Dunder Mifflin with a closet full of his dad's old suits and the expectation that this was a gateway job into his career. Everyone had to start somewhere. As he rode the elevator up to the office, he rolled up his sleeves and took a deep breath, only to have it catch again when he entered the office and saw the receptionist. There was something about her, though he couldn't quite put his finger on it. I saw it happen. The shift. The immediate interest.
But she was engaged.
You see my predicament?
I couldn't send a sparrow her way, because that goes against everything I stand for. I get people together, I don't break them up. I don't break them up, even when I know they aren't truly meant for each other. It's part of the job.
But I watched Jim gravitate toward Pam (the receptionist) and I didn't have to lift a finger. I didn't need to persuade, or coerce, or convince. Sometimes people just know, without my help.
I saw Jim gravitate, but I also saw the constant internal battle raging. He knew Pam was engaged, and he tried desperately to keep things friendly and cross no boundaries. I saw him desperately try to convince himself that friendship was enough. But I also saw him toss and turn at night on days when Pam's fiance Roy came into the office. I saw him stare off into space, which as an expert, I recognized as daydreaming. I saw every stolen glance, every IM he deleted because it felt like too much, every smile he tried to hide when he watched her.
The heart can be merciless.
It took everything I had to stay out of it. Gradually Pam began gravitating too. Now I had these two people who were perfect for each other, inching closer, but one was unavailable and I had to sit back and watch. I can't feel physical pain, but if I could...oof.
You should also know that I don't use the word "perfect" lightly. I hear people say it all the time. "Oh, you two would be perfect for each other" or "They are the perfect couple". It begins to lose it's meaning. But trust me when I say, again: Jim and Pam were a perfect match. Remember that mental list I told you Jim had? I'll give you one guess how many of those Pam fit.
So I had to begin constructing the puzzle.
Which meant finding some loopholes.
Enter Katy Moore. She came into the office to sell purses, but I needed her for more than that (though I do appreciate a good handbag). I saw an opportunity. Granted, I had to swat away some other men in the office like mosquitos, but I was able to send a sparrow to Jim. Not a big one. Not a super convincing one, either. It was basically a sparrow with a broken wing. Strong enough to get his attention but not strong enough to change his mind about Pam.
Originally, my intention was simply to distract him from the constant longing. He wasn't sleeping, his productivity at work was declining, and I liked him too much to see it happening. But as things with Katy began unfolding, it actually worked more to my advantage than I anticipated. Let me explain.
I didn't want to intentionally break Roy and Pam up. I didn't want to risk causing any sort of infidelity. But I knew deep down that Pam felt more than friendship with Jim, whether she could admit it to herself or not. And placing Katy in Jim's path seemed to cause a spike in irritability with Pam. Suddenly Jim's attention was split and she didn't like it.
I was hoping she would come to this realization on her own and reevaluate exactly who Jim was to her and what she wanted from him. Unfortunately, old habits die hard. She resisted and denied and dug her heels in with Roy, trying to subconsciously prove to herself she was with the right guy.
But more on that later.
Okay, where are we? Oh yes. Michael Scott arranged to go on a "booze cruise" for a team building activity. Naturally, I tagged along. Jim brought Katy, but it had become pretty apparent to me that things were dangling by a thread there.
At one point during the night, I found Jim and Pam standing alone at the edge of the boat. Their usual joking started, but quickly I saw something register on Jim's face that was different. He stood there, looking at her like she held the answer to every last one of life's questions—like she was his moon, and stars, and every galaxy in between. Meanwhile, I stood back biting my knuckle so hard to keep from sending anything to Pam to help her see him. And I mean really see him. I told myself I would give it 30 seconds and if neither of them said anything, I would give Jim the final push he needed to tell her how he felt.
25...26...27…
"I'm cold."
Well, shit.
From there the night just continued to go downhill as I desperately tried to salvage something—anything. Roy got drunk and set a date for the wedding. Jim broke up with Katy ON A BOAT where she couldn't leave. Michael got handcuffed to the boat rails. Meredith lost her shirt somewhere in there. I mean…chaos. But despite all of that, I had a feeling I could get another chance with Jim and Pam. That was the closest they had gotten to figuring it out, and while the wedding date was a definite setback, I still had hope.
As the wedding date grew closer, I saw Jim begin to withdraw. Never fully, of course. You can't completely bisect a cord that's as tightly woven as the one the two of them had crafted. But his optimism dwindled with every wedding plan he overheard.
So he began looking for an escape route. He planned a trip to another hemisphere over her wedding date. (How she didn't realize his feelings right then and there will forever baffle me.)
And then one day he found the ultimate escape. A position at the Stamford, Connecticut branch opened up. If he got it, he wouldn't have to see a married Pam every day. He wouldn't have to pretend he liked jelly beans, he wouldn't hear "Dunder Mifflin, this is Pam" dozens of times a day, and he could try and find a way to move on. So he applied. And he got it.
Slowly, I could see my chance to get these two together slipping through my fingers. I knew I had to do something, even if it meant bending my rules a little.
During yet another Michael Scott company party, this time a casino night, I set my plan in motion. I knew Jim needed to tell Pam how he felt before he left and if you saw the way he looked at her from across the poker table, you would have agreed. There was just the little problem of her fiance also being at the party.
I'm not really supposed to tell anyone this but I kind of figured out how to use sparrows in other ways besides love. I can use them for general persuasion. Typically, I can pass this off as being "in the name of love" but it's still a little risky. As a God, it's best to stay in your own lane. You can imagine that when working alongside the all-powerful, you don't really want to piss anyone off.
So, "in the name of love", I persuaded Roy to go home early. I knew he would take the bait because there was a Flyers game on and he wasn't much for company parties anyway.
As he left, Jim and Pam were left in the parking lot alone together. I straightened my tie. This was my moment.
"Hey," Jim said. "Can I talk to you for a minute?"
Quickly, I sent a sparrow to get him to tell her about the promotion. Only, I maybe-kind-of-sort-of-accidentally-on-purpose got that sparrow mixed up with the one that made him confess his love for her.
And boy, did he. He bore his soul. He let her know that all he needed her to know, just once, was that he was in love with her. That friendship alone simply couldn't sustain him anymore. And I think he could have done it without my help, to be honest. He had bottled this up for so long—hid behind the facade of friendship—that seeing her in that parking lot with that glint in her eye and her dress reflecting the glow of the moon so perfectly, that he really had no choice but to let the truth come out.
But it was too much. Maybe Pam knew he felt this way, but to hear him say it? To be forced to admit that maybe it wasn't all in her head? That maybe she felt the same? She shut down and went into autopilot, telling him she couldn't instead of wouldn't, and breaking his heart in the process.
This one was tough for me, folks. Really tough.
I was bending rules, but I still couldn't get myself to send a sparrow to Pam. Not about Jim, anyway. So I persuaded her to call her mom. I knew Helene, and I knew how she felt about Roy, and I knew she would possibly be able to help Pam understand her heart.
But before Helene could get her to fully understand, Jim walked in the door. He took her into his arms the way he had always wanted and breathed her in with his kiss. He wanted her to know that he wasn't going down without a fight (and neither was I).
And for reasons I may never understand, Pam still said no. Maybe it was shock, maybe it was habit, or fear, or denial…but she still said no.
He didn't know it, but I sat with him in his car afterward as he silently let the tears fall. For some reason, these two affected me in a way no other couple had and they weren't even a couple yet. I had never wished that I could go get a beer with someone more than I did in that moment.
But Jim pulled himself up by his bootstraps and made the move to Connecticut. Every morning began with a giant sigh and different bribery techniques to will himself out of bed. Sometimes it was stopping for good coffee, sometimes it was sending Dwight another fax from the future once he got to work.
And it wasn't all bad. Having a competent boss was a nice change of pace. He made more money now and his coworkers were fine enough. The city was quiet like Scranton. But he still thought about what—or who—he left there daily. He wasn't eating, sleeping, or living the way he wanted to. But it wasn't all bad.
And then there was Karen. I started to sense that this new coworker of Jim's was interested in him, without my help. I was torn. I saw the pain Jim was in. I saw how it almost turned into a physical ache for him. I desperately wanted to see him happy. But I wasn't sure Karen was the way for him to be happy again.
And she wasn't Pam.
So I didn't send Jim a sparrow. I probably should have, if nothing else but to give him a distraction, but I stayed out of it. However, as we all have learned, that doesn't always matter.
The Stamford branch ended up closing and as fate would have it, Jim would be heading back to Scranton. The night before the big move back, he went out with some coworkers for drinks. Maybe it was the way she casually kept touching his knee, or the way she kept looking at him from across the bar, or maybe it was just the fact that she didn't remind him of Pam the way every other damn thing in his life did, but he ended up taking Karen home that night.
I watched as he stared blankly at the ceiling, expressionless, as Karen slept next to him.
She wasn't Pam.
He felt like vomiting the entire drive back to Scranton the next day. He and Karen didn't talk much about what any of it meant, but he wasn't a one night stand kind of guy and she seemed into him. Which he had to admit, felt nice. So he wasn't shutting that door.
But he still had to go back to where his heart was shattered. He wondered if there were still fragments of it embedded in the carpet. That's how real—how physical—the heartbreak had felt. He opened the door to the office and there she was, looking as beautiful as ever, and his heart jumped to his throat as she wrapped her arms around his neck.
But what Pam didn't know, was that before Jim even got out of his car in the parking lot that morning, he had already begun building an iron fortress around his heart. He couldn't hurt like that again and self preservation was all he had.
I watched him over the next few months. There would be flickers of hope. He would joke with Pam or I would catch him looking over to reception. But then he would retreat. His growing relationship with Karen gave him an excuse to tell himself that he had moved on.
But I knew better.
I stood on the sidelines for most of this. I felt I couldn't meddle with Jim and Karen for moral reasons, and Pam certainly didn't need any sparrows from me. I had hoped that Jim would come around on his own, but sometimes it's hard to piece together a heart that had been broken the way his had been. Eventually, however, I needed to step in. Find a loophole. Fine...I had to meddle.
I still couldn't get myself to mess with Jim and Karen. So instead, I persuaded Pam. I pushed her to do things that gave her confidence. I helped her find a little more voice. And finally I persuaded her to walk on some coals on the beach which ultimately led to her finally expressing her thoughts to Jim. To actually communicate something. To plant a seed with him that cracked the door a little wider for me.
Meanwhile, Jim was applying for a new position at corporate. Honestly, it pissed me off. I finally got him back in Scranton, got him to lower some walls, watched him consider what he wanted and why he left. And he was just going to leave again?! They never make this easy.
As I watched him in New York, I began to get nervous. I saw him considering the move. I saw him considering the move with Karen. Karen, who knew Jim still had feelings for Pam, who clung on despite that, and who made Jim cut his hair and roll down his sleeves. She didn't know him, and somehow was persuading him to start a new life with her.
Sorry, sweetie. Persuasion is my job.
So as Jim sat in that interview, I broke my cardinal rule for the very first time in centuries. I sent a sparrow. And it was a strong one. David Wallace asked him where he saw himself in 10 years and I let it fly. I painted a vivid picture of what he could have with Pam in the future. I showed him Christmases, and kids, and pranks upon pranks. I needed him to remember how she could make him light up even on his darkest days. How she could make him smile just by being in the same room. I held nothing back.
So yeah, I broke a rule. But you know what? I don't think his relationship with Karen was ever based on love. Not for him. She was a placeholder—a bandaid. She helped him forget, to numb, to deny…but it wasn't love. So I felt justified.
I'd make it up to Karen later.
He broke up with her and sped back to Scranton. It was time to start living again.
They began dating, secretly at first. There were months of stolen kisses in stairwells and elevators. Days filled with the building anticipation and nights filled with the sweet relief of being together. Jim would stay awake, but this time it was because he couldn't believe they had made it here. He couldn't stop staring at her as she slept beside him, wondering how any dream he might have would ever be better than this.
Things moved quickly, but not when you consider how long love had been a part of their story. Perhaps it had been there the entire time and now they were just playing catch up.
They got married, started a family, and began a life they had both only dreamed of.
But there always has to be something, doesn't there?
Just because they were perfect for each other, doesn't mean they were perfect. Communication had always been a bit of a struggle for the two of them, and when Jim had the opportunity to start a new company, he failed to communicate and include Pam in the process and she failed to let him know her feelings from the start. While Jim felt he was doing what was best for his family, it left Pam alone for days at a time with their two kids with no end in sight and a marriage that was quickly falling apart.
And I couldn't let it happen. Not after everything it took to get them together.
After a day of "speaking their truth" and feeling awkward and empty, Jim had to leave to Philadelphia again. I worked my magic in the office first, by convincing Pam that he absolutely needed the umbrella he left on the desk. Then I rushed to meet Jim in the taxi.
In that office in New York all those years ago, I showed him what his next ten years could be like. This time I reminded him of what his last ten years had looked like. And while Pam hadn't been his for all of those years, she had always been there. She had been a constant, a reprieve, a home. And there was no way he could ever let that go.
And he never would again.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Soooooo...
Definitely didn't get this written by Valentine's Day. Oops. But it's still February, so I'm counting it.
Finally made it to our favorite couple! Well, half of it. ;) Enjoy!
Definitely didn't get this written by Valentine's Day. Oops. But it's still February, so I'm counting it.
Finally made it to our favorite couple! Well, half of it. ;) Enjoy!
