If love was like a traffic light

It was a dark and warm night miles away from home. We sat up in bed, fighting the sheep jumping our beds summoning us to sleep, talking the night away as girls tend to do when clustered together.
“I wish falling in love was like traffic lights, so then I would know if I should go for it, slow down or just stop.” My friend says exasperated.
My other friend nods her head emphatically.
And I laugh with skepticism. “So what you guys want is a fail-proof system to know who is worth keeping and who isn’t?”
“YES!!!” they both said at the same time.
“Well though it would make it so much easier to move through the world if we could pick and choose what connections to make or any at all. That’s just simply not realistic. Love will always be a risk, because people are always a risk, so therefore relationships are all risks”
“Let me dream Miriam. Just let me dream that it wasn’t so darn hard!” she said as she threw a pillow my way.
And thus began a long conversation about the relationships we should have brought to a screeching halt, the ones that should have been approached with caution, and the ones we wish meant to take action.

Red means Stop
She loved a man who by sight loved her. But his ways were controlling and jealous. And he used any leverage as possible to make her cry. So she cried a lot.

“You know I passed the red light” She confides as she tells her story. “And I paid gravely for the consequences. By the time I realized I had it was too late to hit reverse. I was knee deep in love with the man.”

Loving someone will always require a leap of faith, and the truth is that soft landing is never guaranteed. But just like traffic lights are there for a reason so are the irrevocable mistakes you see your significant other make.

For her it was easy to be blinded by them in the beginning, but when her life became full of misery because of his insecurities she became frantic, unsteady. She’d passed the light all right, dove straight into oncoming traffic and all she could do was flinch at the flashing headlights.

“I couldn’t hold a conversation with that of the opposite sex without him thinking it was like cheating. I couldn’t have a moment alone without him knowing my whereabouts. And he took advantage of the fact that he was older, used it as leverage to make me feel insecure about the decisions I made. For him I was too young and immature in comparison to know what I was talking about. I wasn’t supposed to have an opinion about anything. It was his world and I was just living in it.”

She was so morbidly counseled by her own insecurities that she viewed the times he made her cry as a sign that she loved him more than anything. That the fact that he could move her so should be the reason why she should stay. She couldn’t knee deep in to the relationship recognize that this was a sign of his poor character. His mean streak of hurting her so he could always one-up her in any argument.

But there’s a fine line between love and a waste of time. Recognizing it sometimes mean coming to a screeching halt. And their story did. Of course not before creating massive damage and debris. Have you ever witnessed a blindsided accident by someone who passes a red light? Everyone around them is painfully aware about what is about to happen and yet can’t do anything but flinch and watch as two vehicles collide. Debris flies everywhere. Even on looking traffic can sometimes be affected.

By the time she realized her worth and ended things it was too late to pull over, or even put her emergency lights on. Their story had collided and created debris. Till this day she finds herself picking up the pieces and restoring the damage that was caused to her heart. But she takes things day by day, realizing it’s just all part of the process. Till she’s ready again to venture out into the road again.

Yellow means Caution

Yellow means caution even though most of our lives we’ve been told “Yellow means go faster.”

“He was my best friend Mimi. My high school sweetheart. My first love. My first naïve and brought to life fairy tale. Oh at first everything was looked through rose colored glasses but I began to notice small changes. Poor decisions he would make. Until I finally became an option and not a priority.”

“Did you love him?”

“Of course I loved him. He was my everything in the way first loves always are. He knew how to take my breath away. He stole my heart. But I wasn’t blind when he started changing. He always had an exit strategy out of any argument we had. He always had a reason for why he was coming around less and less.”

She observed her surroundings as he became slippery soap in her hands. The older they both got the more they outgrew each other. And it was becoming painfully aware that all he wanted was a way out. He wouldn’t call. Wouldn’t care for her heart the way he once did. He always had more time for someone else than for her.

“I finally realized that the person I fell in love with wasn’t there anymore so why was I?”

“So you walked away?”

“More like ran. When someone’s ideals change, when the best thing they are good at is lying. When trust becomes such a huge issue. You sight the red flags. You Read the sign that says “Dead end Street”. You realize it’s time to save face, even if it’s too late to save the heart.”

She, clear minded, made a decision to override the feelings of the heart. Because the heart is treacherous. He was what she wanted but not what she needed. They might have been driving along side each other but it was now at completely different speeds. And they were no longer on the same page. But it was hard. Because when you’ve loved someone for that long, you become terribly attached, and the Jaws of Life must be used to pry you apart from familiarity.

“Years later he came into my life again, and for a second, I won’t lie, I got caught in the nostalgia of it all. He hadn’t changed his core, and I realized I couldn’t just close my eyes and disregard my ideals. I approached the light and it was yellow again and this time I knew to hit the brakes.”

Realistically speaking it takes time to learn that a yellow light serves as an aid. It’s the shade of gray in the black and white of life. It’s the blinking signs on the side of the road that requires notice. Like the way orange cones are put in place to keep us out of a lane they also serve the purpose of declaring a site under construction. The world is always speaking to us every day, in many different forms; we just don’t know how to listen.

SD once wrote that: “So many times it seemed like there would be chances to stop midstream. But it was even worse when you knew at that very moment that there was still time to save yourself, and yet you wouldn’t budge.” That’s the reason we need those flashing lights at times, not to distract us from reaching the actual destination but to simply help us embrace the need to be aware of our surroundings. So that when we do get there, we get there in one piece.

And learn to embrace traffic light cameras. They capture at times mistakes we aren’t aware we are even making. Learn from it. So the next time the same scenario is readily available you won’t choose the same route again, you’ll even detour if deemed possible.

Green means Take Action
There’s no greater feeling than getting all green lights on the way to reach your destination. It makes you feel fortunate. And if you’re running late it helps for you to get there faster or on time. A green light in a relationship means an open passage. A blank page where there are many stories to be written in. It’s an open door to potential.

But we shouldn’t mistake it with a walkway clear of potholes or debris, because that realistically does not exist. In the words of SD: “No relationship is perfect, ever! There are always ways you have to bend, to compromise, to give something up in order to gain something greater. The love we have for each other is bigger than these small differences. And that is the key. It’s like a big pie chart and the LOVE in the relationship has to be the biggest piece. Love can make up for a lot.”

And it does. So you’ll find ways around those potholes. Because being deeply loved by someone gives you strength and loving someone deeply gives you courage. That much I do know.

So when it comes to your life and your relationship, where do you stand? What color lies ahead of you? Look! You don’t want to miss it. For it may decide if you take action, if you approach with caution, or if you should bring that vehicle of a heart you are driving to a screeching halt.

The truth is there is no fail-proof system to help us know who is worth keeping and who is worth throwing out. We have to wing it. We have to hope that the choices we make and the people we deposit our faith on won’t fail us. And even if they do that eventually things will turn out like they should. And that eventually the mile marker and GPS will say “You have reached your destination. You have arrived….”

Here's to happy endings

“It didn’t make you noble to step away from something that wasn’t working; even if you thought you were the reason for the malfunction. Especially then. It just made you a quitter. Because if you were the problem, chances were you could also be the solution. The only way to find out was to take another shot.” – Sarah Dessen

“Maybe letting someone go is the best chance you have for them to come back?” He asked me.

I know what he wanted me to say. To give him a sure answer that she would come back. That it was that simple. I’d always been that person for him, the one who reassured him against all odds. But in that moment every cynical bone in my body wanted to speak out and say: “Love is a load of crap, Run.” It’s funny how altering a personality can be after a series of failed relationships.

But instead I looked at him intently; I bit my lip, as I do in deep thought.

He’d recently come to the realization that the person he loved most in this world was the same person he hurt most. They’d had a relatively short but very passionate relationship, with high emotions, and incredibly high standards. It failed. On his end. It was his fault. It was a series of reasons but that’s not the point. The point is that he let her go, even tried to move on, only to realize that she had always been the one. It’s like my “dress theory” I always talk about. By the time he came back to the first store where he saw the one item he couldn’t find anywhere else… she was gone. And it tore at his being. He the guy, who never showed emotion long enough to get hurt, was left struck, exposed, vulnerable. So this was where he was at now, trying desperately to win her back, with dwindling faith.

“Well is it?” He asked again as if he thought I hadn’t heard him.

“That’s impossible to tell. But I know this much. Life is very, very short. This is it. This is no rehearsal. You’re living it right now. And you must fight for the one you love. Because, what if tomorrow never comes? What if you never get another chance to tell them exactly how you feel? I despise that phrase “If you love something let it go, if it comes back to you it’s yours, if it doesn’t it never was.” Because it’s like saying let FATE decide for us. Love isn’t Fate. It requires chance and opportunity and choices, very emotional, but nonetheless choices. But not Fate. So give it your all before you back out. Try as hard as you can. And if in the end you must walk away, then do so with a clean conscience, knowing you did everything you could.”

He sighs “I’m just so tired of being sad…”

“Well then change this road block into a turning point. Win her heart again. Do not give up. You’ve never given up. Why start now?”

“Because it feels like I don’t have any strength in me, I feel so weak, and I don’t think I can. How do you win someone’s heart again?”

The conversation trailed off as we bounced ideas off each other. Him longingly taking each piece of advice as if it was a floating device.

“Whatever you do, don’t! And I mean DON’T show up to her house on a white horse to serenade her!” I said jokingly. And he laughed for the very first time, in a very long time.

Later that night I found myself within a sleepless night. I thought about my own past, my lack thereof triumph. The fact that it was ironic that, I, the woman with the least amount of success rate was the one always asked for advice. I chuckled at the irony, as I sat down and wrote.

The truth is I don’t believe in fate. But I do believe in love. As crazy as it sounds. Yes! The girl that sucks at relationships, and ironically writes about them for a living, does believe in love. I’m the most optimistic skeptic you’ll ever meet. Because as startling as reality can be, as emotionally expensive it is to go against the odds, it is detrimental to the core of our being to continue to have faith. For all the tumble in our experience we still must have hope. And love, deep, and honest, TRUE love… well that can conquer anything.

Because it’s not an imperfection or a weakness to let it bring us down to our knees, it’s a quality. It comes from a greater power. One bigger than ourselves and all the mistakes that we make with our relationships. But that doesn’t mean you should take it for granted, like it’s up to the cosmic universe for things to fall into place for you. Because it is the things you fight for and struggle with before earning that have the greatest worth. Because in the end when something is difficult to come by, you’ll do much more to make sure it’s even harder, or impossible, to lose…

So here’s to happy endings…

Looking for love in all the wrong places

The following story is dedicated to a dear friend who never gave up the fight and found love was waiting for him only an Ocean away...

“Maybe I’m attracted to drama” he says sarcastically.

“More like drama is attracted to you.” I reply jokingly.

And we sit and talk on the phone for hours about how he finds himself in the same predicament always. He’s the type that falls in love with someone with a lot of insecurities. The type of girl who is too young to know what she wants and needs and often tries to flee from his hands. This is his type and the reason why, though a charming, handsome, and successful man, can’t find someone to love.

Later that day I get to thinking about relationships and about those developed “types” that we all have. For as long as I can remember I’ve dated the tall dark and handsome type. With one exception. But those are looks. What I’m really getting at is the type of person you usually go for. Their traits, their personality. Which is yours? Do you always go for the bad boy? The rude, sarcastic, macho man? The girliest woman who can’t break a nail without crying? The emotionally challenged soul? Or the alarming commitment-phobe type?

My friend whom I mentioned earlier happens to go for the complicated type and ends up usually coming up empty handed. And though he will willingly admit to hating the cat and mouse game. I think secretly he thrives off the chase of it all.

When we fail time and time again though… is it the game or the player that is the problem? When relationships fails we immediately point the finger at the other person. I mean there has to be something wrong with THEM! All our lives we are taught we must blame something or someone for our own shortcomings. Our past, our father, our mothers, our sisters, or brothers. But never blame yourself. It’s never our fault. But isn’t it always our fault? Because if we wanted to change, aren’t we the only ones who have to change? What if we have been wrong all the time? What if the reason that most of our relationships fail has to do with – dare I say it? … US.

I guess there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s like my mother says “Cada cabeza es un mundo”. Which loses its translation in English but shines light at the fact that every situation is different. Every story has a different outline. And there’s no one equation to every and which problem.

Later that week I find myself putting away pictures and mementos of my latest failed relationship. I hold one particular photo in my hand and sigh...

“I’ll always be that girl.” I say realizing it.

“What girl is that?” My friend who is over helping responds, with a quizzical look on her face.

“The girl who always falls for the wrong guy.”

“Oh.”

There’s something so obvious about emptiness, even when you try to convince yourself otherwise. And that was my truth. Till this day my track record spoke for itself. Which brought me back to the same question. Do we all, with time grow complacent when it comes to dating?

Ironically it is our fear of being alone that causes us to make choices that ultimately render us lonely within our relationship. Maybe because we settle, maybe because we just don’t know different. Or maybe, just maybe, because we constantly search for love in all the wrong places.

So how do we break the cycle? First you must realize the answer won’t come to you no matter how many pints of Haagen-Dazs you eat. Instead it starts with one simple fact. You first, must want to break the cycle. How? No one could tell you. You just have to go through it on your own. If you are fortunate, you come out the other side and understand. If you don’t, you’ll keep getting thrust back, retracing the steps, until you finally get it right.

Friendships aren't like Facebook

We sat in a cafe talking away the spring afternoon. We were mid deep into a discussion about friendships. She told me her story. The one about her “Best friend” and how overnight they had a fall out and where now barely speaking. She told me of her many attempts to mend the friendship, and though no matter how much time had transpired how she didn’t give up hope that her friend would come around.

“How can someone just do that? Don’t promises and vows mean anything anymore?”
“If I’ve learned anything about friendships is that you can’t force someone to want to be your friend. You don’t control their heart. If they want out, they’ll find the lamest excuse to exit”
“It really makes me sad that with the wave of hand someone can just give up on you, for no apparent reason at all.”
“I think that’s one of those startling realities we face as we grow older. Best friends aren’t Forever. People will come and go. Some will hurt us. Some will use us. Some will simply let us down in expectation.”

Later that day I got to thinking about friendships. There are people who will profess to have hundreds of friends just because their profile on Facebook tells them so. But out of those hundreds, how many do you really know? How many do you interact with socially in a day to day basis? And more importantly how many of them have been there when you’ve needed a helping hand?

Friends are supposed to be the siblings life didn’t give to us. In some way they make us more complete. They make experiences memorable, enjoyable or at the very least bearable. A real friend has seen you triumph, has seen you fail, and has been there to shoulder the weight of the world with you.

But the easiest way to realize who your real friends are is by noticing who is there for you when your days are gray. It is then, that friendships are tested. It’s easy to be there for someone when their life is going at full speed. But what if your life halts? What if there’s a down pour of trials and tribulations that leave you vulnerable and exposed? That’s when you know who you’re friends are.

When someone you love lets you down, especially someone you expected to be there always, it shakes your faith right where you stand. It leaves you in disbelief that someone can just choose to be a friend when it’s convenient for them. Because friendships aren’t supposed to be selfish that way. But we sometimes fall into relationships that are a one way street. We give, and they take, we need, and they flee. And maybe that’s where the heartbreaking disappointment sets in. In the fact that you would give the world for this person’s happiness but they wouldn’t do the same for you.

A real Friendship is not like Facebook, where you can sign in and out whenever you want. You can’t deactivate someone out of your life. Fall off the face of the earth and come back to pick up where you left off when you feel it’s convenient to activate them again.

The love in a friendship cannot endure that kind of indifference. It needs to be wanted. Like a lamp, it needs to be fed out of the oil of another’s heart, or its flame burns low. Truth is that it takes a few blows to distinguish a friend from an acquaintance. But even if certain people opted out of your life we must remember it was their choice. That the reality can be startling but not life defying. Because the truth is we are all imperfect and we all fail to live up to others expectations at one point or another.

I believe that every encounter in life is a journey, and every journey, a lesson in life. Some people stay in our lives forever and shape your ideals and our being; others stay a little while and shape our character and our strength. But regardless they become a part of you. Always engraved within you. We are the outline and they are the color that gives us depth. When people walk away from you, let them go. Your destiny is never tied to someone who leaves you, and it doesn’t mean they are bad people. It just means that their part in your story is over.

All we can really do is believe, against all odds, that if we keep our hearts open someone will appreciate that, and not take it for granted. And that in the end it’s not the quantity of friends that make life rich… but the quality and the depth of the relationships we see evolve, that truly will make us happy.

Tragically human

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…

Its the end of a decade... but the start of an age

“The hardest part about walking away from someone is no matter how slow you go… that someone will never run after you” – she sighed.

She fell in love for the very first time with a man who loved her dearly. But life, time, and struggles took a toll on what seemed to be a story fit for a fairy tale ending. They’re flame blew out, and their love collapsed.

“Why Miriam!? How!? What did I do wrong!? Is this how it ends!? I feel like that Movie with Jennifer Aniston “The Break-up.” Where in the ending you are fooled into believing that their love will be enough to bring them together but instead the credits go up. You would think things would have happened differently!!!” She said in desperation as a tear runs down her face.

You would think things would happen differently! That an ending like that deserves to be rewritten. There are some endings that are difficult to understand and even cope with. But that’s the thing about life. Some things just are. And not a power in the world or the most wishful thinking will change the outcome. And you could scream and shout “What?!? How?!? Why?!?” Bu

t there’s no use. Some endings just are. And there is no rewriting it, no sequel. Just credits rolling and the fading score of a familiar tune.

You could have all the components: A canvass like the Sistine Chapel , a brush in hand, and access to a variety of paint colors. Gosh you could even be Michelangelo and it still wouldn’t matter. IF the walls, your canvas, are deteriorating right in front of you, you can’t create a masterpiece. It doesn’t matter how many times you stroke your paint brush. All you’ll have is rubble. And who’s ever been famous for painting rubble?

I don’t know why relationships fail. They just do sometimes. All the love in the world, popular to contrary belief, is not enough to make things work with someone. You can love someone for all the right reasons and in a moment they can choose to walk away. Sometimes we hold on so tight it slips right through our hands. And it doesn’t matter how much you fight, how much you struggle, in the blink of an eye you can lose it all.

But what you must remember is that everything happens for a reason. Something good will come out of it. And the truth you can’t see right now, because you’re gaze is clouded with tears, is that it will. You’ll gain thicker skin, you’ll learn what you want and what you need, you’ll appreciate whatever follows. Reality can be startling. But take pride in your pain, you are stronger than those who have none.

As much as you try to script life, it will never pan out exactly the way you wrote it. Life can be unfair sometimes but that is not a reason to give up on it. One day someone will walk into your life and make you see why it never worked out with anyone else. And it doesn’t matter how dark the night. I promise you one thing, tomorrow, the sun will rise. And it might seem like the end of a decade... but really, its the start of an age...

Ctrl/Alt/Delete

We sat in my living room catching up as he worked on my computer. We’d been friends for so long I could tell when something was bothering him. Minutes later we were consumed in conversation about his past love. He wanted to move on. He wanted to forget her. He even wished he’d never met her.

“I wish I could just delete her the way you do browsing history on the computer.” He said quite defeated.

I smiled. “If only it was that simple”

He fell in love with a girl that never really loved him back. He spent years trying to win her heart and he lost himself in her. She built him up only to let him fall till all he had left were broken promises and a broken heart. It took him a while to reconcile with the idea that she was never meant for him.

He pointed at the delete button and clicked “Just like that”

This got me thinking… Could it all ever really be gone? Or are there microscopic traces left behind? Encrypted messages left reeling within us. Maybe not always visible, but always present?

“You might have the right idea. Maybe we’d carry fewer traces of past failures if we could only just cleanse ourselves from all the bad. But from everything? Because after all… along with the trials come the lessons you learned. And could you have ever really grasped them had you not suffered from it?”

“I guess not. But you can’t imagine how much I’ve hurt. How much I’ve been wounded because of all this. For a long time I thought it was my fault. That I made it hard for her to love me. That I had to keep having faith in her, that she would come around. Till it finally clicked that I couldn’t possibly continue to love a person who had done nothing but mistreat me.”

I sighed. “You can’t hold on forever…”

Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds. It dies of weariness, of withering, of tarnishing. And when it does we are left with a full folder of temporary files. Full of history, cookies, and saved passwords. Leaving us with very little room to work in.

But healing is a process, just like unloading all the baggage you’ve been carrying is also a process. When love is lost, it’s not the letting go that will hurt the most, it’s the holding on to her/him that will be killing you. My advice? Make sure your tears are washing something away. What hurt you the most shouldn’t be kept in your hard drive, or your heart for that matter.

It is said that the more anger towards the past you carry in your heart, the less capable you are of loving in the present. So eventually you’ll learn to let go, and you’ll move on and let happiness find its way to you. And if all else fails reboot, restart… press Ctrl/Alt/Delete…

Splendor in the Grass

From one of my favorite movies. Splendor in the Grass.

"That though the radiance which was once so bright be now forever taken from my sight. Though nothing can bring back the hour of splendor in the grass, glory in the flower. We will grieve not, rather find strength in what remains behind." ---William Wordsworth