The Thoughts Inside My Head

Maeve never tasted chocolate.

It seems like such an incidental concept, one week and two days after my family buried my seven-month-old niece. But chocolate is one earthly gift I am happy to have experienced, and so it is with a heavy heart that I think about all my little niece missed out on before her passing.

A chunk of chocolate is just the tip of the iceberg.

Fine wines, fun late-night conversations around candlelight - the ones that are punctuated by laughter so hearty it makes your sides hurt - first kisses. Swimming lessons. College graduation. A lifetime of experience that will fail to come to fruition. And yet I know in my heart that all of these celebrations and milestones and occasions pale in comparison to the many blessings and wonders she is experiencing in heaven.

It still hurts, though. And I guess that is part of the burden of being left behind with the rest of humanity.

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Too Late To Apologize - it's the title of a popular song by One Republic, and for the past few months I've thought about the validity of the words. Is there, in fact, a point when you can not go back and undo the wrongs of a hurting relationship?

Relationships with friends and loved ones can get messy from time to time. Most of the time I am inclined to forgive and forget, if only because the relationship is too important to me. There have been a few times, though, where I have decided to end the relationship rather than subject myself to persistent, unforgivable behavior.

We choose to maintain these friendships and close relationships because they make us happy, they make us learn, they make us feel. And when the going gets rough, we try to put our pride aside and admit our faults and ask for forgiveness. But every relationship requires a two-way channel for this atonement. The situation will never heal itself if one person is consistently doing all of the apologizing, all of the gesturing, all of the work.

And that's when it's likely best to dissolve those ties, however painful it may be.

But is it ever really too late to apologize? Hmm. I guess it depends on how bad both individuals want to maintain the relationship.

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For some reason I experienced a great deal of loneliness this holiday weekend. Perhaps it was in part because I am feeling a massive severing of ties in one aspect of my personal life, perhaps it is also because I was exposed to some heavy coupling - a few scenarios where I was the odd chick out. Most of the time I don't mind being the only singleton at the party, but I guess my emotions got the best of me and I was a bit down in the dumps.

Usually I am content alone.

I like the solitude my life provides me - I also must admit I like the unrelenting demand of selfishness. But in the evening, that's when it gets a bit more painful, when lonesome washes over me and I am huddled beneath my comforter alone. Sometimes I try and envision what it would be like to have a pair of strong arms wrapped around me as I sleep, and I doze off dreaming of deep laughter, a trusted confidant, a future planned around two souls.

I wake up to the slight sadness of solitude.