It never gives up on you

Getting over a painful experience is much like crossing the monkey bars. You have let go at some point so you can move forward…

It was a long and cold lazy afternoon. I found myself immersed in conversation with my cousin. We were sitting in the living room across from each other when he looked up from his phone and simply asked: “How do you decide to give up on someone? How do you know its time to let go?”

I sipped my chamomile tea and sighed. “I don’t think you give up on the actual person. I think we give up on the circumstance. Because if you love someone, you love them unconditionally. But we’re only human. I guess we just fail when our faith gets tested.”

We fall in love with love at a very young age. We live content with hand picked daisies and heart shaped letters. We welcome butterflies, dreams, and ideals. We paint castles and ever-afters. We allow our hands to be held, our deepest secrets to be known, and we share our laughter and our sorrows. We open up the way a flower blooms in spring. We find someone to love, to share, to miss, to be with. And happiness overflows our lives.

But then the storms come. And in its path weakens our foundations, erases the memories, and breaks all faith and hope. And we are left with pieces of what once was. So we give up. We stop clearing the debris and create more instead.

Now the question is do we grow weary to the point where our limits are surpassed by choice? I think it’s both a conscious and unconscious choice. We sometimes want to make things work so bad it hurts. But you don’t put up with so much because you are blind to it. It’s just sometimes you love someone that much. That purely.

You’ll never leave where you are until you’ve decided where you’d rather be. And sometimes that choice is with out them. To be with out her or him. Because all you really want in life is to be happy and some how you're mind is convinced your happiness does not lie there anymore.

So how to time it and bow out gracefully? You can’t. There’s no magic equation or solution to the issue. You just have to do it to save what is left of your heart. Giving up doesn’t mean that you weren’t strong enough. It just means you realized you don’t deserve the pain anymore. And even if your heart breaks to pieces you just have to move on. If someone isn’t there for you, you have no choice but to let them go.

So yes, it happens. We allow the rain to fall enough, we let it pour right over our heads instead of ducking for cover. We open up the door to defeat and to doubts, we allow negativity to consume us. Till one day you realize you just can’t take it anymore and that something has to give. And you walk away because that’s the cowardly thing to do. And let’s face it in trial most of us are cowards.

But love doesn’t end because you choose to walk away. Its threads linger in our intertwined stories. You are either the victim left in the middle of the rubble or you are the victim walking away from the crash site. Regardless both are wounded, both are hurting.

One thing remains the truth sometimes it takes a fall to know where we stand. And regardless of how black and blue you are left the truth is love will never give up on you. No matter how much you give up on it. Like the tide coming and going, it will grace your shore again.

Battle scarred

It’s unbelievable how much things can change in a year – my friend said.

I sipped my hot coco and smiled “Yea. Your whole world can flip around. The rug can be pulled right under you when you least expect it.”

Imagínate lo imaginable y la vida te sorprenderá. My father told me that once. And its true imagine the unimaginable and life will out do you. One day you wake up and you find yourself missing the good old lunch box days. Standing on your fathers toes dancing and twirling. Sitting on your mothers lap. And that tight grip of your fathers hand of a time where nothing and no one could hurt you or
break you.

Getting older comes with its challenges. When your world turns upside down, in a matter of seconds you can lose your grasp on reality. We end up with more baggage than we can carry. And though we wish otherwise life doesn’t come with directions at every road, stop, or crossing.

Personally, the past years have been a rollercoaster ride for me health wise. And I’ve lost many battles just like I’ve won some. I wish I could describe the emotional toll it takes on you. But unless you are physically going through it – you can’t even dare imagine. But I have to say one of the hardest things to do has been to move forward. For me my life was forever changed since that night that everything fell apart. The exit wounds of the unraveling have left me scarred.

And it happens. One moment can define your life so much it’s as if it forever becomes the climax in our lives. That one epic moment in your life becomes the division, the period between sentences, a moment, a partition that will forever be the first thing you think about when you’re telling a story. You find yourself beginning every anecdote with “before” it happened and “after” it happened. For some it’s a bad breakup, for others the loss of a loved one. Or maybe even a life threatening illness. It’s as if every story we get ready to tell is only justified by mentioning it. And that what may seem obvious to us won’t be to who we are talking to unless we mention it.

Every day I wake up and I look into the mirror my reflection troubles me. There is this long an unmistakable scar that runs down my neck. It marks the battle that has been fought. But as palpable as it is, my scar is healed. My wounds aren’t opened though their stain forever blots my skin.

Guys share their stories as candid times and talk about emergency stitching like if they were knitting a sweater. But I suppose most of us hold a scar from our childhood. A scrape knee, a fail at a trick, a trip during a run. Those scars, now healed, are accompanied by laughter and the lightheartedness of times.

For every scar there is a story. But the scars within, the ones no one sees, the ones you hide those are the wounds that leave us black and blue. Battle scars that come with the years like the rain comes with spring. That life causes and at the same time, with time, it heals

My sisters keeper

In the cookies of life, sisters are the chocolate chips!

“Here” – my sister says as she gives me a cup of hot chocolate. “I added marshmallows.”

“Thanks” I say as I sit up in bed to drink wiping off the tears.

“Maybe this will help” She leaves the room and within minutes comes back with her own pillow and lays down right next to me. Hands me a box of tissues and turns on the TV and we proceed to watch an old Fred Astaire movie.

She isn’t one of many words. But this is her way of saying I’m here for you. Growing up with her had its ups and downs. But I have to say moments like these I wouldn’t trade her for the world.

We are very different her and I. Six years apart to be exact. She’s not emotional or an over analyzer. She’d rather you not hug her or kiss her. It’s her way. She’s always been that way. But in every tragedy of my life she is the one person that keeps me grounded.

In the past two years she’s not only taken the role of my sister but also has become like a second mother to me. Getting sick took not only a toll on me but in my family. In her in particular. She’s become a caregiver and nurse; who shifts her time everyday so that the load of a chronic illness is not a burden on just one person. She slept on the floor of the hospital for a whole year somehow proving she does love me. To me she is the gift to my heart. Both a defender, and a listener, and a conspirator. A sharer of life’s greatest moments and its greatest sorrows.

I once read a card that said: At times it feels like you’re the gum stuck in the bottom of my shoe. “I didn’t ask for you. I don’t know how you got there, but I can’t get rid of you so I might as well live with you…” And it’s true having a sister you know comes with many quarrels and annoyances that would sink any friendship but never a sisterhood. No, sisters stick together through thick and thin under an unannounced loyalty pact. Sticking up for each other at all times. No one can pick on her, no one but you.

The gift of a sister is a treasure beyond compare. When mom and dad don’t understand a sister always will. She teaches you how to double team your parents and how to get away with anything. The ties between sisters will always be some of the strongest bonds. And though growing up she would break, borrow, tell on, and monopolized the bathroom making you late all the time… you love her unconditionally.

“She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone who knows when you’re smiling even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she’s the reason you wish you were an only child” –Barbara Alpert