Words To Live By

I am having an insomnia kind of night, which sucks because I'll be a tired bitch tomorrow, but wonderful because this seems to be when I forget what writer's block is and take to the page like a bat out of hell. I keep thinking of a conversation I had with a friend earlier this week. She was lamenting an ex from years ago, one who has caused her great distress since his exit or lack thereof (part of the problem, well most of it). She needed to vent, I let her and during her catharsis, she screeched, "I wish I'd never met him. Seriously. I wish he'd never existed!"

It's definitely not the first time I've heard these words, and if men keep up with their track record, it probably won't be the last, but for some reason, I thought about them long and hard, and that conversation was days ago. It's interesting to say you wish you'd never met someone. It's literally the eternal sunshine, a spotless mind, a chance to not just forget but to have the relationship never happen in the first place. Like cleaning a hard drive, no trace left behind. But when you throw out the baby with bath water, you are losing everything. Not just the cheating, the tears, the fights, the betrayal, the pain, but also the kisses, gentle touches, shared inside jokes, nights of incredible passion, moments when you felt like the luckiest person in the world. You lose all of it. And if that's perfectly fine with you, wouldn't that mean the good parts were not so great in the first place? That you'd trade in all your good times just for some peace from the bad? Talk about an unbalancing act.

The truth of the matter is that we all have someone we'd love to forget, someone we wish never stepped into our lives. We'd give anything to have never made the string of choices that led us to them; deciding to stay a few minutes longer in the book store, thus meeting him in the cookbook section, walking instead of subwaying home and meeting a handsome stranger while waiting for the light to change on 75th and Columbus, or deciding to go ahead and go out with your best friend's boyfriend's cousin (whom you were barely interested in and definitely not looking to date, but decided to anyway). You could cancel all those choices, wipe the slate clean, start over without the baggage they added to your wagon of woes, but isn't that apart of what life is? A string of experiences that shape and mold us into the product others see each day as an outsider? If you start erasing experiences, people, pain, happiness, good, and bad, you end up with a clean slate, yes, but also a blank canvas full of nothing. And nothing sucks. It's very boring and uneventful. It isn't a lived life. The reality is that we can't control what others do to us and unfortunately there's always someone waiting just around the corner to disrupt our lives, ruin everything, make us wish we'd never met them. But the possibility of someone around the bend who will add bright, broad strokes to a messy canvas, turning it into a Picasso is something I'd never want to lose out on. I think of the moments I've shared with people who are gone from my life, relationships that ended. The good moments, no the great ones. And not just the obvious moments, the quiet, hidden ones too. I wouldn't trade them for anything. They're part of who I am. They're part of my memories, that little pocket of my brain where my life lives in pictures, snibbits and snapshots.

Trust that the old adage is true, everything happens for a reason and while hindsight is 20/20 and rose colored glasses are the foggiest spectacles out there, you will never be able to see anything as clear as you'd like. All you can hope is that you learn from mistakes, treasure the good and bad times and move on in a positive direction.

That bitch stole my line,

xoxo

Blackie Collins