Life Goes On
November 30, 2007

One day you will take a chance again.

But before you do, your heart will break like nothing before. The core of everything you love and know to be true will be ripped to shreds. Something inside you will die. It will be a failure and disappointment you will never fully recover from. It will turn you into a skeptic. You'll be insensitive to others and you won't give a damn.

The only thing you will have the will to do is get up every morning, go to work, find a bar at 6:00 and drink away the parts of the day you cannot put away from your mind. You'll do this as often as every day, even Sunday. There was a time when you loved spontaneity, but those days are no more. You'll live by routine. There is far less to think about when you live by routine and you're better off not thinking about anything.

***

One day someone nice will say, "I think you're great. Would you like to go out sometime?"

You'll smile politely and graciously decline. What you'll really be thinking is, Hell no. Never again.

You will become a non-believer.

Taking chances will never cross your mind.

***

Your friends will pull you up and out of that thick, black, sticky mess.

Slowly, very slowly, they will help rebuild you and make you feel a little more whole.

You'll start to like things again.

You'll start to like yourself again.

One day you'll laugh and even feel good about it.

***

One day you'll be hanging out with a friend and something inside you will stir quietly and very unexpectedly.

It'll scare the crap out of you because it's coming from a place you thought had died a long time ago.

You'll want to resist it, but you won't because it's that good.

One day your heart will ache, and it will not be because it is broken, but because it is so full.

And one day you'll decide to take a chance again.