New Friends

The summer was coming to an end and it had been just like all the summers before it, as far back as the Girl could remember in her short existence. The other kids in town would spend their days outside getting dirty and making the most of this joyous time away from school. The Girl had done so in the past, but having turned ten just recently she felt she had outgrown such activities. So instead she stayed home devouring old fashion magazines from her aunt’s beauty salon. The styles were usually outdated, but the glamour seemed timeless to the Girl. She would imagine herself in a magical world with beautiful people untouched by the hardships of real life. “Oh yeah…” she thought “and there’s no dust either, I hate dust”.

That afternoon she had spent hours trying to decipher articles meant for much older readers and jotting down the foreign sounding names of designers and people who seemed to be important in that world that now fascinated her. She flipped the page and came across a phrase that would remain present in her mind for the rest of her life “diamonds are a girl’s best friend”. She then started to wonder how a piece of shinny rock could be a friend to anybody. Her mother was outside on the porch sewing buttons onto her father’s worn out shirts. Perhaps her mother could help her understand this most peculiar sentence. “Mamma, can I ask you a question?” “Sure baby” responded her mother sweetly. “I was reading some old magazines and it says that diamonds are supposed to be a girl’s best friends, how come?” The mother burst out into laughter and explained to her daughter the best way she could “well diamonds sure aint no friends of mine, they rarely make their way to this side of town”. “Why not?” insisted the girl. “Silly girl you must understand that those magazines show pretty things that people like you and me will never have”.
The girl went back inside feeling angry that at only ten years of age she had already been sentenced by her own mother to an ordinary life. She loved her mother, but she didn’t want to be her, and she knew the only way to become who she wanted was to leave that dusty town behind. So from that day on she began to prepare her exodus which would occur exactly eight summers later, by continuing to devour the magazines which she thought contain the knowledge needed to exist beyond the town.

Twenty summers had passed since she had first learned of these elusive pieces of carbon and twelve summers since she had left her dusty hometown behind. That summer was turning out to be exactly like the many summers gone by, when all of a sudden a shiny black car came into town leaving a cloud of dust as it flew by. The car stopped in front of the humble house where and old lady sat in her porch. The woman who stepped out of the car was dressed with things that women of that town were never going to have. She made her way towards the porch and smiled at the old lady and said “Hi Mamma!” “Well it seems like you’ve done well for yourself”. “It hasn’t been all good, but at least I’ve made new friends”-said the Girl smugly as she opened her jacket to reveal an exquisite diamond necklace.

Something Better...

Every day was exactly the same as the one before and the one to come would also be just the same. A first wave of pain would hit like a ton of bricks just as she woke up; it was the knowledge of being hurt by the person she loved the most. The second wave of pain would carry on throughout her workday and it was delivered through the constant coming and going of painful memories of the spectaculardestruction of her love story. The third and final wave of pain would appear in the evening when the quiet and stillness did a perfect job of showcasing the emptiness left behind by the one who had left. So one night tired of thishalf existence, before going to sleep she wished with every sad and desperate particle of her being that someday she would be able to let go of the past and finally start walking towards the future without looking back ever again. Turns out life was much wiser than her and considerably more generous than she ever thought possible because slowly but surely it would grant her something

With no immediate relief in sight she made a promise to herself that no matter how heavy her heart felt at least her body would get up every morning and face life and as for her mind she decided to keep it busy with new knowledge. “Eventually my heart will catch up, it has to!” she thought.And just like that the days passed and her heart felt less of a burden because now every morning it too got up and joined the body in living and it found joy in the knowledge acquired by the always busy brain. The memories of the past crept up on her once in a while sending a more modest and brief burst of pain, but she had learned to live with them and see them for what they were…memories.

The Man had come into her life the way all great romances do, unexpectedly. He was smart and quite funny in a not so obvious way, but the fact that she understood this made her glad. He was sufficiently charming, but not too much as too raise any suspicions of insincerity. As they spent more time together she would sometimes catch herself smiling for no apparent reason and her stomach was a good kind of uneasy. One day the Man took her out to a small lake and invited her to take a ride on tiny old paddleboat. The opposite shore of the lake looked beautiful, but for some reason she keptlooking back at the shore they were now leaving behind.This reminded her of her own life, and all the time she had wasted being tormented by the ghosts of the past. She thenremembered about how she had wished to never look backagain, and realized that life hadn’t granted her that, but something better…to be able to look back without agony and bitterness, but as a reminder of how far she had come. She now understood that all the pain of the past hadn’t hardened her heart; it had prepared it for love. She didn’t want to hurt the man, she wanted to love him.

“What are thinking about?”-asked the Man casually. Shelooked at him with a smile and said “something better”.

The Gamble...

The boy was finally enjoying success in his professional life, he had found a steady job where he worked hard but his opinion was valued and his efforts seemed to be recognized. Turns out he was on his way to being somebody someday, despite what everyone thought of him! The Girl felt hopeful that a future together, was now a possibility and not just an improbable dream. The problem was that this job took him all over the place and he now rarely spent time in the city where he had met the Girl, where they had fallen in love. The Girl however, was still in the city, which now seemed so empty and so foreign without the Boy. Her only comfort came at night with the ring of her phone; it was the Boy’s daily call. She would be greeted by a voice that was familiar in a way that a pleasant memory is; it was a voice that belonged to a happier time that now only seemed to exist in the past. He would start by telling her about his day, and then it would be her turn to do the same, they would exchange a few laughs and soon enough the Boy would start yawning and they would say goodnight. These exchanges were pleasant but void of any real passion, the kind that comes from physical proximity and a shared existence.

So the days turned to weeks and the weeks to months, and that nightly ritual just didn’t cut it anymore. She tried to stay positive, focusing only on the deep love she felt for the Boy and the promise of happier times with him by her side, but a voice inside her head kept telling her that this was no way to live, this was no way to love.

So one night, sick of the crippling loneliness she decided to call up the boy to ask him if this long distance arrangement was a temporary thing, because she couldn’t take it for much longer. She hoped to hear that the Boy didn't want to be away from her for that much longer and somehow they would figure out how to be together. However, what she got was a sobbering dose of cruel reality. The boy answered a bit irritated “I don’t know, I really don’t think about these things, lets worry about them later. Right now I’m just working my ass off, so I can have some sort of future, this kinda feels like my last chance."

“I’m just so damn tired of always being alone", exclaimed the Girl. “What do you want me to do? Do you want me to quit my job, and put a ring on your finger and be together all the time? Would that make you happy?" -asked the boy angrily.

“Now you’re just being a douche!” said the girl with her heart in a knot. “You know I would never ask that of you and you would never do that for me. All I ask is for you to leave some time for us, otherwise we wont make it! I cant keep fighting for a place in your life, only you can grant me that."

She wanted so badly to make the boy understand her anguish, but then she realized it was pointless, the Boy had made his choice a long time ago. "You know what, I’ve heard enough", said the Girl with an unexpected determination in her voice. “When you play poker you always have to trade in a card to hopefully get the one you want, I'm the card you're trading in for what you believe to be success. Guess you have to take chances in life, the problem is you went and gambled with a girl's heart."

Of Weeds and Cracks

As the girl waited in the lonely parking lot under the unforgiving noon sun, she looked down to give her eyes a rest from the incessant glare. She noticed a weed coming out from one of the cracks in the concrete. The tiny plant seemed determined to exist where it shouldn’t. Somehow it had found a weak spot in the concrete and made its way to the surface where it could bask under the life giving sun. Then she started wondering how come such a resilient life form could be considered undesirable by most people and branded as a pest. How come people devoted products and energy to stop nature from overcoming such an unnatural material like concrete?

Then just like a spark, a thought suddenly lit up her brain, she realized that her love for the boy was exactly like that weed. Many times had she tried to yank that love from her heart and in a few occasions she had been pretty sure she had pulled it out with roots and all. But just like that pesky weed, that love found a crack in her heart that yet had no healed and started making its way to the surface, so it too could bask under the good sun. And just like that weed in the lonely parking lot, she couldn’t decide if it was an admirable thing to be cherished or if it was a pest that needed to be combated. But what she did know is that every time that love resurfaced it made the crack in her heart just a little bit wider.