Bratty Girl

Sometimes when I walk among the world of the two legged, I see and hear many things. Often I have noticed that people get so caught up with their lives that they tend to miss out on the simple things that bring great joy, peace and a feeling of well being. The world and the events that take place around them cause them to become faint with worries and as they slowly lose themselves and become completely consumed by the things going on around them, they forget the simple things that bring inner peace and happiness.

Things such as feeling the gentle breeze upon their exposed flesh and as it blows through their hair gently tossing it from side to side. The sounds of the birds as they welcome the rising sun and the fragrance of the flowers after a gentle rain. I look around me and I see things great and small. I realize that they're a part of me and that I, too, am apart of them. We exist together for we are apart of all that is and all that remains. I walk hand in hand with my life mate and we have come to learn that if we lose ourselves in the fears and worries of the events that are so readily pushed upon us, we also lose track of who we are and where we're going.

Sometimes we must just stop and take time to smell the rose. We need to catch our breath and to just enjoy life and its simple pleasures. Today I walked into my back yard and though I could hear the siren of a police car and also that of an ambulance, I listened to the wind blowing through the palm trees and the birds as they sang. I watched the clouds as they drifted endlessly by on the bluest sky. Inside me I felt the flutter of my heart as it became as one with my surroundings. I felt the air rush into my lungs and for just a brief moment I heard my heart sing.

Your ex-love gave her wedding invitation to you personally when suddenly a tear rolled down from your eyes. She wiped it immediately and said, “You’re the one I want to be with … but you didn’t fight for me.”

Up to where can you prove your love for someone? What will you do if that someone asks you, “Do you really love me?” Then tells you, “If yes, then set me free.”

“Time will come, you’ll get mad at me. Time will come, you’ll ask me why I left you. But when that time comes, this is all I have to say, “It’s not that I left you, it’s because you let me go.”

It’s hard to realize and to accept when the one you love has to go … it hurts but you say, “I can survive this.” But tears fall ’cause what you really mean is … “Oh God, what’s gonna happen to me?”

“When I die, there’s just one thing I ask … I hope you’re there crying for me. But on the other hand, never mind. Why? Coz I don’t wanna see you cry on the arms of someone else.”

“I wish I never met him. I wish I didn’t trust and hope too much. I wish I didn’t put myself up just to get hurt. But when I remember how much he made me happy, I go back to being stupid.”

“I was first hurt by someone I really love. I didn’t want to give up even if it hurts. But one day … I did. Why? Because I got so tired and exhausted. I realized how hard it is to love someone who’s not meant for you.”

“I fought for you because I love you. I didn’t give up on you even though it was difficult. But when you said to me, “Sorry, I’m tired,” my heart was shattered. Not because I saw everything I worked for go down the drain, but because you left me fighting alone.”

Letting go doesn’t always mean, “It’s over.” Breaking up would not mean, “I’ve had enough.” Instead, it’s as good as saying, “I don’t want to see you sad anymore, go on, you deserve someone better.”

“I feel sad when I don’t get to see you. I get hurt each time you ignore me. I’m jealous when I see you with somebody else. Gosh! I want to keep you all to myself. But then I realized … I don’t have the right. Coz you’re not mine.”

“Sometimes, even though you already love someone, it’s still possible to fall in love with somebody else. If that happens to you and you’re forced to choose … follow your heart and choose the person who you’ll be happy with. Even if it’s not me as long as you’re happy.”

“I loved you though I know it’s wrong. I waited for you for so long. I gave you my all until there’s nothing left for myself. I did everything for you. But is it enough for you to love me? Or is it enough for me finally give up?”

“I got tired of waiting for you… I don’t wanna get hurt anymore. So I’m gonna stop hoping and I’ll try to move on … but I’ll walk away slowly … real slow … so if by any chance you wanna stop me, you can still catch up.”

“I’ve done the bravest thing in my life. I let go of someone I love so much. But as I did the bravest thing, I never felt weaker. All I did was cry and wish that, “I hope I was never that brave.”

Loving someone can sometimes be exhausting. No matter how much you love a person, time will come when you have to give that person up, not because you don’t love him anymore, but because you’re hurting too much coz he can’t take care of you.

The world can be so damn confusing. You wait for the one you love. The one you don’t love waits for you. But the saddest thing of all … you love him, he loves you, but fate doesn’t want you to be together.

Did you ever love someone but you had to let them go? You thought they don’t love you, never cared. One day, you see that person again already with a kid. You ask them, “What’s the name of the kid?” they smiled and said, “Same as yours.”

“When you walked by, I told my friend, “I loved that guy.” My friend asked me, “So why did you let him go?” I answered, “If he were MINE, do you think I’ll ever let him go?”

When I was a child, I wanted to grow up and fall in love. Now that I’ve grown up and falling, how I wish I was still a child … coz it’s easier to heal a broken knee than a broken heart!

People say that love is the best gift anyone could give and have … my heart was crushed and I asked myself: “Isn’t it tragic when I’ve got so much love to give, yet no one seems to want it?”

Sometimes there would come a time when we have to stop loving someone. Why? Not because the person started hating us, but because we ran out of reasons to fight for what we feel.

“Teach me how to be strong before you go. Teach me how to believe if you ever lie. Teach me how to control my tears before I start to cry. And please, teach me how to make you stay before you say goodbye.”

It’s hard to live alone. It’s harder to choose someone to love. But the hardest part of loving is to admit that you’ve fallen for someone who can never be yours.

When you fall in love, don’t give everything without leaving something for yourself … someday, somehow, it would be too late for you to realize that you’ve given all for the wrong one, without saving something for the right one.

“I don’t run from you, I walk away slowly. And it kills me because you don’t care enough to stop me.”

Life is ironic! Sometimes you keep on crying even if the guy neglects you, but you get surprised one day that just when you stopped crying and found someone new, that’s when he starts crying over losing you.

Love that we cannot have is the one that lasts the longest, hurts the deepest and feels the strongest.

The worst feeling isn’t being lonely. It’s being forgotten by someone you could never forget.

It hurts when the one you love left you and said, “You deserve someone better.” Then all you can say is … “Maybe I do.” But deep inside you’re crying coz you know you can’t find “BETTER” when you already found the “BEST.”

I wonder what love is…

Sometimes, it feels like sunshine on the perfect day. I just want to bask in it. But a shadow passes and it becomes a vengeful storm; I just want to get out of it. One day, I'm flying. Another day, I'm drowning. Then, I can't have enough of it – craving and bursting with insatiable desire. Soon, I'm sick to my heart and dying to tear away. Now, a welcome delight; streaming in like dawn through an open window. Quickly, a horror- ten thousand rivers washing my life away.

Tell me – which one of these tortured, conflicting emotions is love?

Is love an illusion then? An emotional blindfold that tricks you into a cruel commitment? If it has all ended so badly, tell me – what was it I felt when it was beginning? Love, eh? Fickle love. It teases you into deep waters and abandons you in the middle.

I'm sure all of that sounded quite familiar. Love is one wicked experience. After you've fed fat on a few romantic novels and watched a few movies, you go in thinking you are about to be launched up to cloud nine. “Cloud nine” turns out to be a tiny room with no windows, occupied by two people struggling to breathe.

How can something that felt so sweet at the beginning turn out to be so sour in the end? How can something that felt so natural at the beginning get to demand so much effort in the end? How can something that felt so filling at the beginning turn out to be so draining in the end? How can something turn out to be so different from what it felt like in the beginning?

The conclusion: love is left somewhere between dusk and dawn. It slipped out through the window, grew wings and flew away. Without its magic dust shading our vision, we see ourselves as we truly are – grossly inadequate, terribly irritating. It abandons us, strips the props from our beautifully constructed stage, leaving us to wallow in bare, grinding reality. It is, itself, like the wind – no telling when it will come or when it will go. So, when we commit to each other, we keep our fingers crossed, hoping that love stays to keep it sweet and beautiful.

I wish I could sit love down and have a chat with him. I'll tell him to stop popping in and popping out of peoples lives like it was a children's game. Don't you know lives are wrecked by your whimsical behavior? That's what I'll tell him. Stop picking people up, whirring them up to dizzying heights then letting them fall and dash themselves into a million pieces. Once you come, stay – damn it! We are at your mercy, o love! Once you come into our hearts, for heaven's sake – stay there forever.

Love is not a feeling, so don't bother asking which one of the million and one things you feel when you see an attractive man or woman – is love. None of them is. None of them is the sign that he or she is The One. Nothing you feel confirms the rightness of your urge to pursue them or guarantees the happiness of a future with them. The truth – the certainty you seek – is not in your feelings. They will always be what they are – temperamental, fickle and constantly changing. That is the eternal nature of our feelings.

Love is a choice. It is a decision you make after you've seen the facts. Love chooses. Love decides. It is not a mysterious charm or an over powering attraction that holds it down. Love is always free, never bound. It stays because it chooses to stay. It is not at the mercy of emotions it cannot control. It does not depend on feelings it cannot control. I tell you – love is the decision to be with someone and do whatever it takes to make it work.

It is not what you think in your head or feel in your heart. It is what works for the person you are living with. Deciding to discover what this is and to do it consistently, regardless of how you may feel on any given day, this is what love is. It is in this sense that the Bible says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son” (John 3:14). In plain English – God wanted to be with man and did what needed to be done to make it happen. We do not love because we feel; we love because we are willing and able to do what needs to be done to be with someone.

So the next time you wonder – is it love? Don't check how you feel. Look at the person – look at their needs and their expectations, their dreams and their aspirations, their weaknesses and their inadequacies – and ask yourself; am I willing and able to make this person happy?

We all think that love is all about the deep things in life – and that the strong bonds of love might be about the sacrifices that people make for each other. Well, love can be a little simpler than that.

A recent research conducted with 52 couples found that laughing strengthens the relationship. When people laugh at the same thing, they validate each other's opinions. Private jokes and pet names, things that others just don't get, strengthen ties between couples.

One of main reasons why people who laugh together find that they grow to have each other is because laughter is a pleasurable experience. The more positive memories you have, the more you love the other person.

If you have ever ate something and got sick and then decided from that time on not to eat the food again? Same thing applies to relationships that have a lot of negative images. Negative images add up to pull the relationship apart.

The second component of love is those secret little pet names and private jokes that no one else knows about. These little secrets help the couples feel that they are in a tight bond. It seems that they are likely in their own little world with their own language that no one else understands.

So, may I suggest that go ahead, create endearing yet funny and unusual pet names. Even "klunkhead" may evoke such giggling-inducing and warm associations with the moniker that only the two of you will hold dear.

I once believed that people were meant to fall in love, get married, have children and then live happily ever after. Now I realize that everyone’s boat floats for different reasons and I needed to find my own.

There was a time not too long ago when I believed that in order to be a whole person, and to feel like I had finally reached "womanhood" I would have to be in a serious relationship, or even better, engaged. I now realize what this belief was based on. It starts with a message that society sent me as soon as I was able to comprehend such things. That men and women were meant to fall in love, get married, and have children. I mean this is, after all, the "norm" of things.

To make matters worse, most of my close buddies from grade school have already gotten hitched and had children. Then of course there is the fact that I grew up watching Disney movies that always portrayed a damsel in distress that could not function as a normal person until she was "saved" by a gallant, handsome prince. Oh yeah, and they ALWAYS lived happily ever after.

So I spent most of my youth in and out of relationships, quickly realizing that Disney lied to me. Who were all of these villains? Where was my prince? I was always the one to end these relationships, mostly out of pure disappointment. I thought such things as, "Isn't he supposed to be charming? Isn't he supposed to have a great singing voice and take me for rides on his beautiful white stallion?" I settled for a sports bike and a nice car.

For a while I tried to convince myself that men would become more charming as they aged. They would mature and then be more in tune with their hearts, and finally understand what it is to sweep a lady off of her feet. I gave up when someone I was dating referred to his dog as his Valentine, and did nothing to show me otherwise. Well, I hope the two of them had a very romantic candlelight dinner and ended the night sharing their doggy-breath as they kissed.

I believe I have done my fair share of trying, and have resorted to enjoying my time alone. I look at the up side: I can do whatever I want, whenever I want, and not have to explain it to anyone. I can sit in the shade with a book, drinking tea, and not have anyone interrupting me, or getting jealous that I would rather read than pluck their uni-brow. I do not need to worry about my feelings getting hurt by someone I decided to trust, who will only betray it one way or another.

I simply focus on the good parts of being single – like freedom – and the bad parts of relationships – like possessiveness. It really works, you know. I have realized that I do not need to strive for that dream of a prince. For that goal of living happily ever after with my one true love. I can be happy in the meantime just being me, and doing my own thing, and if someone should come along that catches my fancy and one thing should lead to another then so be it. But in the meantime, I have found other things to look forward to and enjoy. I have found pleasure in the single life. I will enjoy it while it lasts, however long that may be.

For me, it's all the experiences that I've been through, the good and the bad, the happy and the sad, the laughter and the tears, the friends and the jerks, the black and the white... everything!

You mix them all together in a large salad bowl, add some salad dressing, there you go - Life. Don't like the asparagus and brussel sprouts? Then don't eat them. Don't like the tomatoes? Well tomatoes are good for you, but it's your choice.

You want some olive oil to go with your salad? There you go, pour all you want.

Life.

I never said it’s always easy and happy. What I'm trying to say is in your life, there are the good stuff (like croutons and bacon bits) and the bad (like asparagus and sprouts). Everything is "nicely" package. We just sometimes forget to look at the price tag hidden on the underside.

The good stuff, enjoy all you can (while they last). The bad stuff, you can either force it down your throat, or push them to the side of the plate. But if you keep staring at the asparagus and keep thinking about it and worrying about it, it's not going to turn into an apple slice, it's not going to change things, and while you are doing all the fretting over your stupid asparagus, you might be missing out on some of the good stuff.

The salad bowl is life itself and we didn't have the choice of what we ordered in the first place. We weren't shown the menu. That, perhaps, is the sick part.

Gratitude, appreciation, giving thanks. No matter what words you use, they all mean the same thing. Happy. We're supposed to be happy. Grateful for friends, family. Happy just to be alive. Whether we like it or not.

Maybe we're not supposed to be happy. Maybe gratitude has nothing to do with joy. Maybe being grateful means recognizing what you have for what it is. Appreciating small victories. Admiring the struggle it takes simply to be human. Maybe we're thankful for the familiar things we know. And maybe we're thankful for the things we'll never know. At the end of the day, the fact that we have the courage to still be standing is reason enough to celebrate.