Blog Posts by Monika Basile

Broken Heart
There are so many things to be afraid of in this world. Love is not one of them.

Being in love, falling out of love, staying in love, loving to the tips of your toes and into the pits of the stomach and even the loss of love should not be something to be feared. Yet, there are so many of us who live inside this fear that we fail to live inside the reality of loving someone deeply. So instead, we do without. We don't dare give one hundred percent of our heart with the fear it will not be returned or it will be taken from us. And that is the truest tragedy-that we miss the most important parts of life worrying that they will not last.

I think we should be more afraid to become robots, to become self serving, to run into hiding as we try to avoid something as common as a heartache. What does this leave us with? Where do we get to in life? What do we obtain to block our feelings off as we wander on this journey? Sometimes, we get things. Sometimes, we have great accomplishments.

Sometimes There Really Are Monsters Under The Bed
In memory of my dear Uncle Pete who passed away in the wee hours of this morning.

My father instilled a great love of monster movies in me. Most Saturdays and Sundays of my childhood were filled with marathons of the Creature Feature or The Monster Matinee. My Dad, my brother, my uncles and my cousins would settle down for the long haul of it most weekends. And we were the true couch potatoes; absolutely glued to the television set, living for commercial breaks to run to use the toilet so we wouldn't miss anything, and filling our bellies with wonderful junk to enjoy our movie experience-except for when I would hide behind my dad's big easy chair when it got a bit too scary for me.

You see, I am one heck of a big old chicken and it started years ago with my own imagination. But being a chicken-and knowing it-gave me plenty of ways of learning to cope with a bad case of "The Fraidy Cat Syndrome". Me, and my wild mind can make absolutely anything scary if I think about it long enough.

Tiara.
"Isn't there more?"

I have difficulty when someone says this to me. I have heard so many women complain of all they have in a relationship as they still long for the elusive "more". I am confused as to what it actually is and how each of these who have said this to me cannot describe or explain what it is they are still seeking.

There is no perfection. There is nothing really close to it. There is goodness, and sweetness, tragedy and heartache mixed in with it. What "more" can another possibly crave?

It is odd to my ears, while speaking to a woman who I knew, she kept saying, "He is good to me. I love him and he loves me. He has a good job and is kind and attentive and we can talk for hours about everything. The sex is great. We get along so well, but shouldn't there be more?"

I was appalled. I said, "You have it all right there. What more are you wanting?"

"Oh, I don't know. It just feels like there should be more to it than this. I mean is this what I have been

Daisy with missing petals
I feel as if I should have some perfect advice for all of my children due to being a mother to many. Yet I think I have already given it by example. They have each watched me do things and the result of it all is they should easily be able to figure out what they should and shouldn't do. It is easier to see the fault and success in another life than in our own. It is simpler to watch sometimes than to attempt to explain where we made a splash or where life went wrong.

However, there is one thing that has plagued me like the plague. One thing I would so like to especially share with the girls in my life.

You do not see yourself as you really are. You really don't. We women really do not see all the subtle nuances that others see in us. What we see in the mirror is not the truth and only a partial truth. Don't believe your own eyes because they play tricks on you.

Society shoves down our throats that we have to find the beauty in ourselves or others won't find us beautiful. It isn't

Men of a Certain Age Characters
The age of indifference has nothing to do with numbers. It has to do with mindset and what we grow accustomed to, what we allow, what we accept and what we have given up on. I have found this does not conform to an actual timeline or years lived in the world. This has more to do with not caring and not even caring that you're flitting through life unconcerned.

People are people no matter what age they are.

I have been given advice to go for older men. "They are the ones who will take care of you. Who will get you. Who will want to settle down and actually have real relationships."

I have been told by an older man, "We're too old to get emotional about things. We don't need all that seriousness."

My response was, "I'm too young to resign myself to live my life without any emotions involved." Yet, I do not have any belief that my thought or feeling has anything to do with age. Nor do I think his thoughts on the matter have to do with how old he is either. It

Metro crowd.jpgI don't want to date me.

I want to date someone who is different than me. Someone who might open new worlds up or at least make the conversation a bit more exciting than talking to myself. I want to date someone who has similar core values but is not all the same things I am. I don't want to be in competition with my potential mate.

Of course, it is important that dating couples share some common hobbies and interest. It is important to have things to discuss and talk about and activities to share together. It's a good idea to maybe like some of the same music or be able to enjoy a movie together-to like certain things our mate likes. However, we do not have to be clones to share a life together and enjoy our time together.

By the urging of my dear Aunt, whom I have written about before, I joined a dating site she suggested. "Monika, you need to try something new because what you are doing is just not working for you." So I did as she suggested and figured I would

The big bang
Meeting someone for the first time can be something that can cause me to shake in my boots a bit. But I am brave, and I do so anyway. It is difficult enough to wonder what they will think, what I will think, what we will think without also wondering what a crowd of others may think. But as I said...I am brave.

We had agreed to meet for a drink. He would be having dinner with a buddy coming into town and I was teaching a self defense class. We would meet after each event and after I could change my clothes and run a comb through my hair. And then I receive a text, "He is running late, would you be interested in joining us? Unless you are too scared..."

I responded, "I am NOT scared." and agreed to it because sometimes I just cannot turn down a taunt like that. Except I was scared. It is hard enough to be, in a sense on display for one, let alone for two to decide if I muster up to their expectations. I know it really isn't any big deal . You meet, decide if you like each other a bit

Paper with a heart drawn on it and a pencil piercing the heart.
Sometimes I am not a very big person. I like to think I am kind and generous. I like to think that my norm is to be forgiving and understanding. No one is all the time. We are human and we fail at perfection most moments of our days.
I look back on my past relationships and I see I have not always been good at an ending. My thoughts and my feelings and my spirit is sometimes too angry to allow the better things to shine through.

I recall a recent ending, not too recent and not too distant, but close enough that I still think on it. There is a single moment in the ending that I do not regret. Only in one of the moments did I shine in and none of the others.

We had been arguing-Mr. Music and I. This is not something I did or do well. I am not good at sustaining any type of argument as I usually shut down with embarrassment or fear of saying the wrong things and hearing the wrong things thrown back at me. Yet, here I was, arguing-loudly and shamefully acting the fool.

"I don't know