It’s not every day you lose your heart. But it’s also not every day that you find yourself again. The following story is that of a beautiful soul who day by day gets stronger. Who with every turn of a page in her story finds peace and forgiveness. Whose learn that the love that matters most is the one that happens within herself.

It’s a warm and sunny day. A rather strange phenomenon. An almost spring day right in the middle of winter. But this is Texas and the weather here changes every 10 minutes. I find myself with a dear friend talking away the morning. Sitting out on the patio of my favorite coffee shop, the bustling of the city is all around us. Doors opening and closing, people’s chatter, and cars on a nearby street are passing by.

I smile and pick up a dandelion next to my feet. And look up to realize she’s all ready in tears. And her story begins to pour out of her.

“Have you ever been in a room full of people, and still feel terribly lonely? I feel like that often, like my happiness is gone and my soul is missing. There’s just this deep sadness that fills me. I don’t know how to explain it but it’s as if I feel dead though surrounded by life” She confessed to me.

And for a fraction of a moment, like the eye of a camera, I catch a girl I’ve never seen before. A sadness she’s carried around inside all this time. Years and years, since forever. It’s a silvery shimmering, every bad thing that ever happened to her. I see it in her face, but only for a slippery second and then it’s gone.

She’s the kind of person everybody wants to call their friend. She is beautiful in an effortless kind of way. A girl’s girl and a guy’s dream. She has the easiest going personality you’ll ever meet. The most down to earth girl you’ll ever know. When you talk to her she looks into your eyes and listens with her whole heart. When she hugs, she hugs tight as if she’s giving you a magic circle of safety, and you know that everything will be all right. She’s everything good. Everything great. But underneath that funny girl and deep brown eyes she carries wounds that have left her scarred, a tattered soul, and a broken heart.

She fell in love with the most unexpected person at the most unexpected time. She fell for a man who seemed to fit every description she ever wanted, everything she ever thought she needed. But as rapid as their love progressed the problems arose quickly. He was the only boy in a family of five, next to his father. The house was in a woman-communist political state. Where what was done and carried out was ruled by those of his sisters and mother. This web he found himself tangled in was a deep, knotted, twisted one. So when She came into his life, opposition rose from his family.

It wasn’t “An I just don’t like this girl”. It was a lynching of her character, of her being. A manipulative scheme with high emotions and unchristian actions. A terrible plot that even Cinderella’s steps family would be envious of. And even through all of that she held on as tightly as she could. He after all promised better days, better times. They began to write their future. Make plans of ever after. He painted for her a home, a family, a life far different than the one they lived. And she believed everything.

“We bought a house. A fixer-upper. We spent countless hours in it, working together. Building what I thought would be our happy ending. But well I just couldn’t compete. It didn’t matter how many times we painted over the wall, how much effort I put in trying to make it easy for him. On one side I was stacking up the bricks, on the other his family was bulldozing them.”

And you can close your eyes to the things you don’t want to see, but you can’t close your heart to the things you don’t want to feel. And she felt everything. All their hate, all their rage, all their bitterness. She could feel not wanted miles away. It took her heart, her soul, her being. They destroyed most of it with their harsh words and catty ways. Took their love and tore it to shreds with their lies and conniving ways. Till all she had were fragments and a big empty hole where her heart used to be.

It was winter when his mother became very ill. And though that should have been the perfect time to come together, it drove them farther away. His mom begged him to leave her. He was torn between family and the girl he told he loved. A decision hard to make especially after finding out she was now pregnant.

Maybe it was all the stress, all the problems that he felt he caused, all the confusion that lay in front of him. Or maybe it was his coward soul that made him decide he couldn’t have a child. That the problems it would cause and that would arise would be unnecessary for him. So he talked her into terminating the pregnancy. Said that things were bad enough now. How much harder would they get if they brought a baby into it. His mother would die of shame; his family would finish out casting him. No. It was too much. Too hard. He promised that after everything was done he’d be there. That together they’d get through this. And that tomorrow when things died down they would begin to plan a family again.

She got lost in all his words. Found reason in his deception. She fell for his meticulously constructed lies. After all this was the man she loved. And she wanted to believe in him. So she did, blindly. She ended a life of a soul that had no fault in any matter. A soul that was the last trace of what they had between them.

Anyone can say they love someone but true love is the actions you prove you actually mean it. And his actions spoke loud in clear. After the abortion, just when she began to unravel emotionally being dragged down by guilt and remorse. She needed his support more than ever. But He told her his mom needed him. And broke up with her just like that. And there was nothing she could do. Nothing she could say. She’d been fighting him and the world for so long there was nothing else for her to give.

It’s like trying to fight your way out of the middle of the ocean in the midst of a dark and rupturing storm. She couldn’t but just close her eyes and be swept away. And she was. She was swept away by disappointment, and guilt, and regret.

“He actually went with me to the doctor to make sure I’d gone through with it. (The abortion). After the break up I didn’t know what to do. I kept asking myself what it was that I did wrong. I tried Mimi, I really tried. How could a person who could leave so suddenly drag me along for so long. Especially when I went through the hardest thing for him, which was giving up the baby. I hated myself, I let a man make a decision that was also mine to make. But I was so fooled by him. I was so caught up in his stories that everything would be okay. After, emotionally, I was a wreck…”

As much as she tried, he could feel the gap wedged between them growing bigger and bigger. He gave her life, but he also took it from her. A reason to live, to dream, to hope for. With the poking and prodding of a broom she was scuttled away from his life, from his heart.
And she’d not only suffered the loss of a relationship but also the loss of a child. And though some things just end, others just come crashing down, toppling over everything in its path. Even ourselves.

“He’s since then moved on with his life. And me. I still feel like I was left outside in the middle of the storm and he took my umbrella. I never spoke to him again. Everything that came after felt like a long battled divorce procedure, you know?”

“Yes. I know” I sighed “Where only lawyers speak to each other and assets are divided. There are no apologies. No remorse. No true showing of what he felt. And deep down inside all you ever wanted was to see him face to face. To sit in front of him. Have him hold your hand and say I’m sorry. But really, really mean it.” I said. Battling my eye lashes to stop the tears.

“That’s exactly what it is like. He’s always apologized but I’ve never seen him face to face.” She shook her head and put her hands to her face.

“It’s a cowardly way. A backwards way of saying I’m sorry because he was put up against the wall. It just never seems genuine…” My words trailed off.

“It’s not something you forget. It haunts me every day.” She said interrupting me, as she ringed with her fists the handkerchief she held in her hand. “When I see a baby around the age mine should be, I die a little inside. I wish I’d known then that I could of walked away before it all fell apart. But I was blind. Blinded by him and his happily ever afters. Blinded by foolish hope that the next day would be different. Blinded by a volatile way of love where you only give but you never get. “

For a moment there’s a silence. A deep and heartfelt silence as she tries to compose herself. She plays with the rim of her coffee cup and finally speaks again.

“You know it’s been over 3 years now and though I’ve dealt with all the ghosts and all the demons of the past. I can’t dare imagine my future.” She says looking out, her gaze almost drawing out the pictures of what she sees. Fears and ghosts and every consequence she faced are dancing on all the corners of her mind. “I don’t think anyone could ever love someone like me. Someone who took life from an innocent child. It doesn’t matter how much I regret that decision. How much I hate myself for it. No man will ever believe that.”

I sigh and hold her hand. “I don’t know. Look if a flower can grow through cement, then love can find you at anytime.” And I open up my hand to show her the dandelion I had picked earlier in my hand. I look at her intently. “I know you have a lot of reasons to remain on the floor but what amount of happiness could be found in despair?” I place the dandelion in her hand and for the first time she smiles.

My grandmother once told me “Deja que el pasado sea pasado mi niña. Deja que el viento se lleve ese dolor y esas lagrimas. Deja de aferrarte a lo que solo te desgasta”. She was referring to the deep and hard battling clinical depression I’ve had since I was 13. In her way she was telling me that Grief can be a burden, but also an anchor. You get used to it. To the weight. To how it holds you to place. You get used to it so much you begin to believe its lies. That there is no life after a loss, that there is no hope after despair, that there is no faith after deception.

Grief can bury you much faster than actual death. Grief can freeze you to a moment in time and place. To where all you see is that. All you believe is that. For HER, falling in love with a man whom she believed in blindly came with heartbreaking consequences. She not only lost herself, but she lost her will to have her own voice heard. She made mistakes, mistakes that haunt her, mistakes she can’t undo. And she suffered gravely. But worst of all she lost the love we must all have for our own selves. That love is the most important of all loves. Because it absolves us of the responsibility we put upon ourselves to live up to the expectation of others. It dusts us off and readies us for whatever the tides may bring. It reassures us even knee deep into it a storm that this too shall pass. And it gives even the meekest soul a roaring voice to power through the hushing and pushing of our enemies. Our enemies that come in all forms.

Regret is long. It tears at your being, at your soul. It weighs you down, and it shreds all faith. But as long as any rap-sheet can be. Longer is the grief that anchors us. Stories like these remind us that we all carry baggage, no matter how far from land we are. They remind us that we are human… Tragically HUMAN. That we ALL make mistakes right down to the day we die. That no one is perfect. That you can’t judge others because the harm you cause is far deeper than you can imagine. That like my grandmother said we should let go of the things that tatter our being. That the past is just that, the past. And that when we understand that we also learn what it means to Forgive those who hurt us… and even perhaps OURSELVES…