Well, it has happened.  I have been bitten by the blogging bug, sank its teeth right in and refusing to cease. In consequence, you great people will be subjected to the many random, and at times long-winded, thoughts that bounce around in my brain from day to day.  A friend directed me to a quote some time ago by the famous writer, and infamous drunk, Ernest Hemingway.  He said "write hard and clear about what hurts", and I intend to do just that. 


A few of my best girl friends have come to me lately for relationship advice, why they chose me the Lord only knows.  Ask anyone about my strong suits and I guarantee that at the very bottom of the list would be "great with relationships". Hell, I don't even think it would make my list.  Nonetheless, these people come to me with their questions and concerns, so I feel obligated to put my best foot forward and offer the best advice I can. 

We were talking the other day about men of our past.  How do we move on? When did the moment come that we knew in our gut that it would never work? What steps do we take if they present themselves in our lives again? All these questions we agonize over. We sit and think about these hypothetical situations of what we do, how we react, if we see our ex's out somewhere.  This very close friend of mine told me that a guy she dated briefly, but fell in love with instantly, had contacted her a few days prior.  "I just sat there and stared at my phone", she said with a wide-eyed gaze, "I found it so hard to breathe, and at the same time a rush of anger flew over me and I swear steam came out of my ears." Naturally I asked her what the message said, thinking that maybe he had sent her some surprising declaration of love or an affirmation that he had moved on with his life. He had written her the simplest form of platonic conversation, one word, "Hey". This one, simple word that has turned my normally sane friend into a stock-raving lunatic.  All it took was a single word from him to send her flying off the edge again, enough to fill her mind with memories that she had tried for so long to block out. So after listening patiently to her ramble on about this guy and the new Shakespearean situation of "to reply or not to reply, that is the question", she finally looked at me and asked, "What would you do?" Undoubtedly, this question sent me on a dumpster dive into my own past, my own forgotten memories, my own male counterparts, and my own similar situations.  What do we do when someone of our past decides to turn around?  There are plenty of quotations out there that offer fortune cookie advice about our present selves and our past, "Don't answer when the past comes calling, it has nothing new to say". I have to admit that when faced with a ghost from my past it is extremely easy to let my mind wonder on the what ifs and the well maybe this times of the certain person.  Far too many times I have put my brain on cruise control and allowed my emotional, hormonal heart to take the wheel and charge full steam ahead right back into the same situation over and over again. Most of the time, when the past grows tired of me again and moves on its merry way, I more or less do the same.  But this particular day, sitting in front of my lost friend I couldn't help but wonder, how many times does our past come through our door before we decide to change the locks?

How do we know when something is really over if it presents itself in our lives over and over again? How do we distinguish the line between the girl who is waiting to the girl that just looks pathetic? Truth is, we can't.  Some times the long nights we spend lying awake replaying particular conversations in our minds, picking apart and dissecting the words we exchange with another person and constantly looking for ulterior meaning to everything they say make it seem like we act crazy for nothing.   It is absolutely exhausting, and given enough free range, it can consume us.   But then we have those days when everything lines up how we think it should go and we think I can wait, I can do this. We battle internally with ourselves over what our friends think, what his friends think, do we really deep down believe that this is the key to our happiness, and if it is, how do we make it stay?

In the end, we have to decide what we can live with.  The decision is our own, and given enough time to clearly think we already know the answer.  Can we live with(out) this person, or can we live in the situation we are in? Ultimately it's a simple question to ask others, but when we look in the mirror and ask the same to ourselves, the realizations can rock us to our core. 

So that's the question I asked of my friend, what could she live with? She sat there quietly for a while, contemplating what had just been asked to her. She never gave me her answer, but that didn't matter.  From the look on her face I could tell that she knew that answer, and that was good enough for me.  I did let her in on my observations of my own self. I asked for my past to come back,  I put myself back in this situation, so I knew the risks of what I was getting into.  The things he and I have shared with each other are for only us to know, and I have a fear that it will always be that way.  But I still believe in it.  That is the root of all of this, my faith.  That is what keeps me going, and the moment I feel that my faith is gone, I will be also.