Card Carrying Member of the Lonely Hearts Club


This is not the place I expected to be though it is the place of my own doing or undoing depending on if you are an optimist or a pessimist. I look back and I see how everything happens-a chain reaction from decisions and choices I have made that may have seemed inconsequential in the beginning.

Everything counts. We may not realize that in the beginning and sometimes, we may never realize it at all. It doesn't make it not true. It all adds up to our lives, every moment lived, every belly chuckle, every round of weeping, every heartache and ecstasy, every single part of our living of our lives matters in some way. It counted whether the universe was keeping score or not. It all makes a moving difference or it makes a stagnant difference. And sometimes we get so caught up in what we do not have, have not accomplished and the places we have yet to travel to-we forget everything that led us to this place we reside in now.

We forget that we may be lucky even in the midst of tragedy. We are still here. We still can learn and we still can teach. We can love-even if we have been unlucky in love before. We can still can have that-the chance of loving, being loved unless we stop right in this moment and decide, it didn't matter and that nothing we ever experienced meant anything.
We learn and take something good from every love affair and relationship. Something lingers and holds on even when we decide to ignore it all and not remember. If we bury each heartache then we are unable to find the lesson. Surprisingly, many of the lessons taught are good ones. I would hope too, that we have left those whom we have encountered with a lasting impression.

If I spend this Valentine's Day left alone to my own devices ( I am not able to predict the future even a week in advance so I shall say "IF"), then I will not spend it pretending that I am joyous to be in this spot here. I'm not. I won't go out with girlfriends and party under a false facade of an "Anti-Valentine's Day Screw Men" bravado because I don't believe it. I am a firm believer in love and all it stands for and if we have one day to simply honor the thoughts of love and all we love and who we love-I'm okay with that. We should do that every day but so many times we don't. It isn't a bad thing to have Valentine's Day to remind us of what we should be doing all the time. It's just a yearly kick in the pants to do so.

I won't spend next Thursday boo-hooing and lamenting the fact that I might spend it alone because I realize I am lucky. I have loved so deeply and greatly in my life and I don't regret it even if it didn't turn out the way I wanted it to. I have learned that not all good is good, not all bad is bad and everything in between was worth living through. I have learned that sometimes people are not capable of the same type of love as me yet they are loving back in the best way they know how. I have learned to take leaps of faith in another's heart and to forgive my own for not being perfect. I have learned some of the lessons love teaches us, not all, but many. The most important lesson I have learned is that loving people is worth it. It is always worth it.

Monika M. Basile