Monika Basile's Blog: Confessions of a Bleeding Heart, page 3

Being Me

There has been a huge blessing growing up in a large Italian family. Though everyone is constantly involved in everyone’s business, and we overreact to all of each other’s business, there is a blessing in knowing that those we are dear to, make sure we are aware at all times that we are their business.

I think of when I was young and experienced my very first heartbreak. I hadn’t quite realized how painful it would be or that I would feel it all so intensely. I didn’t expect the physical pain of it, the punch in the gut knocking the wind out of you feeling, the throat swelling fighting tears at all times feeling, the empty feeling and all the other awfulness of the whole thing. I didn’t expect either for it to be one of many dear uncles to offer the comfort and the lasting advice to a devastated teenage girl. It took me many years to actually believe and take that advice.

I remember sitting in my grandfather’s TV room, away from the crowd in the basement, by myself, nursing the wounds, struggling with the difficulty of being around such happiness when I was so miserable. I stared at the flickering screen like a zombie, not seeing any of it and fighting back the urge to weep when my Uncle Pete glanced in while he walked past the doorway. He did a double take.

“Why are you in here alone?” he asked.
I couldn’t speak. I burst into tears and shook my head.

He sat down on the stool and was quiet a minute and then said, “There will be more…really.”

I shook my head again, explaining how there wouldn’t be, how there was never to be another again. I told him how there must be something wrong with me because I felt like since it happened, that I couldn’t breathe and I would never be able to catch my breath again. I asked how something could possibly hurt this bad.

“I know you don’t believe me, but this will pass. And you will love someone again and you will hurt like this again and maybe even worse. And that will pass too.”

I didn’t believe him. I told him I hadn’t dated many boys and that it seemed if whenever I was brave enough to just be my real self they didn’t like me. Uncle Pete said, “You are very intense. You feel things real deep. That’s real scary to boys. Someday you will meet a boy that isn’t afraid. It might even take until you meet a man. But you will meet one and he won’t be afraid. I promise you. And they are going to be thankful that you are just who you are. You don’t have to change for anyone. You just have to be patient.”

Though I heard him, I didn’t believe him and I didn’t understand at all how people survived heartache after heartache. I didn’t take his advice. I spent much of my life attempting to conform to whatever someone felt would be a better version of the way I really was. Oh, I started off as the “me” I really am but I never quite ended up that way in the end. Time after time in my life, in the midst of relationships I found that it didn’t work. The being me thing. It never quite worked for as long as I hoped. And I did change in far too many ways. I was a practiced contortionist and an expert balancer of a life that wasn’t really mine.

Yet, my Uncle Pete’s words would linger in my brain. I would hear them ringing inside and still not take that to heart. I still kept trying to fit my square peg into a round hole insisting it would fit if I just carved off my edges and smoothed it all out. I wonder too, why I always have felt that it is me who needs to do the adjusting and never the other. In the endings I heard his words as a shout and was only then able to give up the battle of trying to make the undoable doable.

As I have grown, I realize now that my Uncle only told me the truth. There will be more…really. Yes, there has been. I can actually be quite intense and someday, there will be a man who will not be afraid of that and will instead glory in it. Though patience has never been a virtue of mine, I am learning to find it within and wait. I can’t settle for someone who wants to pick apart the things of me that are truly me, no more than I ever want to have a man feel he has to be anyone other than himself. I would rather spend our time together just enjoying each other—amazed at the wonder of it all and knowing that being comfortable enough to expose our souls is what makes something lasting. It is okay to feel life very deeply—intensely, even if the hurt hurts a bit more than the norm because the joy is all that much bigger too.

Monika M. Basile

Stay Golden

I have spent too much of my life apologizing for being who I am. I have said, “I’m sorry but I feel…I’m sorry but I think…” and so on and so on. I have offered words of excuse for being a bit eccentric in my living, for being too emotional, for having outrageous ways of thinking and thinking outrageous thoughts, for being a “marshmallow” around those who might take advantage and for having the audacity to make some really stupid choices.

I have mistakenly assumed I needed permission to be a little broken when we all are a little broken. That is what we humans are. Our lives, if we live them, are lived at a cost. Our hearts, if we use them, do not come away unscathed. None of us should offer apology for being the people we are and stepping out into this great unknown and exploring it even if we become tattered and worn a bit. Being broken does not mean we are unusable and have no value. There is a lovely quote about it and I hope I am giving credit to the correct author of it:

When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful. ~Barbara Bloom

I do believe this to be true of us humans on this Earth. Our life experience is what makes us of the living. Our life is the gold filling in all of the cracks and broken parts, making us stronger and more beautiful and causing us to sparkle and shine. It is not in our most perfect moments that our character is built. It is in the darkest ones, the silent ones, the troubled ones—this is when our true colors show and this is when we decide what we will do with them. Will we make spectacular rainbows or will we just turn them into a mud puddle? Will we allow the golden parts of our living breath to make us beautiful?

The time to say you are sorry is when you have hurt someone maliciously or even unintentionally. Yes, even if we meant no harm, we should ask forgiveness if we caused it. We should not apologize for being true to ourselves and living our lives the best we can. We should not beg remorse for singing off key, telling corny jokes, dancing badly or alone, for laughing too loud or crying too hard and dressing badly in society’s eyes. We shouldn’t be embarrassed to have our own thoughts or feelings or beliefs as long as we are not hurting and destroying anyone else by doing so.

There is no need to atone for the sins we haven’t lived just because someone doesn’t like who we are or what we do. We don’t need to make excuses for not being perfect and failing miserably at times as we keep trying to get it right. We don’t need any reason to be just who we are and we don’t need to apologize either that we may not be what others think we should be. There should be no shame in being broken. The mended pieces of our souls are merely battle scars from living life courageously like true warriors are meant to do.

Monika M. Basile

Growing Roots

When I was younger, I never understood what “outgrowing” someone meant. I didn’t understand how that could happen at all. How did you suddenly not grow at the same rate? How did you decide that you were beyond who you had always held close to you? How did this happen?

I still can’t answer the questions of how and why, but I do realize now that it happens. It happens an awful lot even when we don’t realize it is occurring. Some people never grow up and some people just grow old. I am not sure what is worse. I only hope that I continue on in becoming the person I am intended to be. I have never been one for standing still so I think I have a good chance at it.

I don’t want to love someone with the same type of emotion I did at eighteen. Things are so much deeper now. What I am capable of feeling is so much more than the girl who loved a boy blindly, and wildly and madly. Now I have grown up enough to love someone with understanding and acceptance and with knowing the truth of things. It doesn’t make me old. It doesn’t make me wise. It makes me real. It makes us all real to allow someone into our lives knowing everything awful that could happen yet hoping for more of the best parts to find their way into their lives.

Growing older we have the benefit to know some things before hand when looking for someone to share our lives with. If we have grown up and out and in, then we know that there is more to it all then just how we “feel”. It’s more than just chemistry though there has to be chemistry. It’s all more than money and pretty things and fancy places. It’s more than accomplishments and prestigious lives. It is so much more than what we used to think and dream about when we were younger.

As we grow up we should finally have clear enough heads to realize that it’s about liking someone as well as loving someone. That respect for another is just as important as kindness. That laughing together is so much more exciting than passionate arguments. That a core value shared makes for more stability than fleeting infatuations. That real love and passion and desires are built to last around genuine caring for another’s heart and mind and not just a body.

In our grown up love stories, we have so much more knowledge and skill that we didn’t have as teenagers if we have learned on this journey at all. Our choices shouldn’t be made blindly or impulsively. It doesn’t mean that there is no longer that flutter of hearts as we decide what we need and want. It is only that we should be trying to figure out who is growing at near the same pace. We should be looking for that kindred spirit that we can actually talk to and not just make love to. We should be attempting to find someone whom excites our soul.

In the next part of life I don’t want to grow apart or away. I intend to grow with someone and never stop until the end. Nothing is promised. Yet we have to realize that if we don’t continue going forward, even at a snail’s pace, we never get anywhere at all.

Monika M. Basile

Everything to Fear

It wasn’t easy to end a twenty year marriage. I had spent all of my adult life married to a man whom I loved very much. To end it, to turn away from what I had cherished a half lifetime, was a devastating and frightening act. It also was necessary for me to have the chance to have a truly love filled relationship
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There was fear. There is still fear. I feared that I could not make it on my own supporting four children. I feared that I would lose it all and I did. I feared that I couldn’t bare the loneliness and there are far too many days where I can’t, but I do anyway. I feared I would end a marriage that ached my heart so much, and still wind up alone. I still fear that. It may be what happens. I may end up alone which would be awful, but is still better than the place I had been drowning in.

However, I left the life that I had always known with the glimmers of hope that I would now be in the world, with as much of a chance as anyone else to find the man who would actually not only love me—but also like me. It is easy to backslide into the thoughts of not deserving that. It is easy to think that I am merely a fool with big eyed dreams and unrealistic expectations of what should happen in my life. It is easy to sometimes feel that I may have made a terrible mistake even though I know deep inside it wasn’t. It was and is my becoming.

These past years have been an awakening of sorts. I see the world so differently. I see my life and the men who have been part of it as somewhat of a wonder—a frustrating, chaotic, enchanting wonder. I have learned in these few years what some learn in much less time and what some never learn until the end of their days. I have grown into the woman I always was but who was kept frozen inside me as I attempted to be what someone else insisted I should be. I have “bloomed” as someone dear recently told me. “Don’t be afraid to bloom! It’s time.”

It is hard for people to admit to their fears. They are afraid of it. They think saying it out loud will make it true and give it life. I am afraid of it too. Yet, I am not afraid to hope that my fears are unfounded. I am not afraid to live my life with thoughts that life will be as I hope for or as I long for. The hardest part is to make the leap of faith and allow the ending of what is stopping the chance at your next part. It is hard to admit when you have had enough and tried your hardest and your life is still pretty much in the toilet. Surprisingly it is scarier to some to get out of the toilet rather than be flushed away.

That is the part that you hold your breath doing. The climbing out, the going up knowing you can slip back down at any moment and will. They say most would rather dance with the devil they know than the devil they don’t. I had decided that I would rather dance with a partner with the same rhythm and have a better chance of life being…well—better , than to stay stuck in a spot that I already knew was destroying me. It was and is scary. It still is in so many ways but some of the fear has diminished. I know now that I go on, life goes on and what can happen, might happen and it may very well be wonderful.

Sometimes a marriage does become “terminal”. Sometimes we get brave and fight our way back to the living and have to leave the heartache behind us as if it were a terrible disease. It doesn’t mean the rest of our lives will suddenly be peachy keen—it only means that we have a new chance, a new beginning, a new hope to have what we truly need and want. Sometimes we become better. Even the sweetest flowers are nourished with all manure, yet they grow and bloom and they BECOME what they were intended to be.

Fear can either paralyze us or it can set us on fire to change what we can no longer tolerate. It is terrifying to change your life when you don’t know the future or how it all will turn out. It doesn’t get better if you don’t start climbing out of what has created misery. Be brave.

Monika M. Basile

When I Was a Mermaid

I was eight and he was ten. It was summer vacation on a yearly trip my family took to a resort in Indiana about an hour and a half away from our home outside of Chicago. It was a highly anticipated event for my brother and I. We saved our money all year for it to buy souvenirs and to play the games of chance on the boardwalk.

He was my brother’s vacation friend. I was the third wheel always with the two boys. I am sure I cramped their style and I am sure too, it bothered my brother to have his little sister batting cow eyes at his summer friend. But my eight year old little girl self seemed to be unable to hide them and unable to stop my hero worship of this strange different boy who was older and always nice to me. He didn’t treat me like a kid sister like all of my brother’s other friends had always done. He still treated me like a girl even though I could climb a tree way higher than he could.

We were all too young to swim in the lake. (I eyed that lake constantly with dreams of swimming there like the teenagers in their pretty bikinis and big boobs) Instead, we had to content ourselves with the resort’s pool. I thought it was a wonderful pool and I swam like a fish, out swimming my brother and his friend though he did fairly well with keeping up with me.

My brother got bored and went off by himself, but I, and Mr. Young Merman decided we would continue to swim. I had the thought in my head that summer that I could turn into a mermaid if I only had enough time in the water. We had discussed how “merpeople” could talk to each other when they spent the majority of their time underwater. We did an experiment. We would see if we could hold a conversation underwater without drowning.

I remember it so clearly, as clearly as the ice blue water, the blinding sun shining down on us and the smell of suntan lotion coating the air. Us, swimming in the deep end, under the water as “merpeople”, his sun bleached hair and his bright eyes open and smiling as bubbles escaped his lips.

He said, “You’re pretty.”

I tried to say, “What?” water choked me and I shot to the surface. He popped up behind me.

“Are you okay?”

I rubbed my eyes, “Did you just tell me I was pretty?”

His freckles stood out on his wildly blushing face. But he was brave, “Yes. I said that. You’re pretty.”

I took his hand and pulled him under the water with me. I managed a few words as the mermaid I wished I could be, “Say it again.”

And he did. His face got closer to mine as we held hands and he kissed me under the water with the bubbles swirling between us.

I couldn’t hold my breath any longer and again popped to the surface. He followed behind me. “Wow.” was all I managed and we continued on swimming.

In all the summers after that, I don’t remember him ever kissing me again. He did hold my hand though when we would swing on the giant swing that overlooked the lake. We wrote letters to each other for years. The last I received was the summer of seventh grade. I don’t remember what we wrote about. I can’t even remember what we even talked about one magical week each summer of our childhoods. I only know that he was my first kiss, my first true kiss and I never forgot him.

It’s funny what importance first kisses take on. It seems that just about everyone can remember theirs and the name of the person who they shared it with. It may be that it is the awaking of what it feels like to like someone who likes you, or the first time you realize that there is more in the world than you had ever imagined. Most of us can look back on that kiss and recall it fondly and with sweetness. It was all so easy then, so simple. It was before games and rules and over analyzing and second guessing. It was just being who you were and someone liking who you were and kissing you to prove it.

I have thought of him often over the years and wondered if his life turned out well. I wonder too, if he has thought of me and if he realizes how he made the little girl I was feel as if she really did have the powerful magic mermaids do.


Monika M. Basile

Red Shoes

This is just a small part of the story. The beginning part. It is one I never told and least of all to the person it is about though I have promised to do so some day.

Awhile back, I had been discouraged about my ability to pick anyone who might be good for me. I seemed to get sucked into the most unlikely of relationships and wind up confused and feeling like a fool, or shocked and feeling that I must just somehow be an idiot in the grand scheme of the universe’s workings. So, I asked God for specifics. I said, “Put a red blow on him. I seem to choose so poorly. I don’t trust myself anymore to find what I am supposed to be having because I get distracted too easily, or too excited, or to understanding, or I am just not where I need to be. Put a red bow on him, God, because I can’t make heads or tails of this anymore.”

Mr. Music arrived on the train. I have written of him before. “ The Wishing Well” is about him and an ending of sorts. I guess it is confusing to not have started at the beginning. I think somehow we don’t know how significant something will be until we have gotten somewhat through the story.

I digress.

We had talked for a time but hadn’t met. Life didn’t work out for it to happen at that time. Yet, here it was at last. The grand meeting. There was excitement and nervousness and I decided to just go with it. It was in the midst of a heat wave. I was dressed to the nines. I looked great until I stepped out in the heat and my hair frizzed and makeup melted down my face while I drove in my poorly air-conditioned car and waited at the station. “Red bow, God. A red bow.” I am not sure what I was expecting, but certainly not him.

I sat there waiting until the crowds of passengers had flowed through the parking lot. And then he stepped outside and I was pretty sure it wasn’t actually him. He was nothing I had seen in photographs and not at all what I had imagined. Though I knew he was a few years younger, I didn’t expect someone that looked about thirty or younger. He had wild crazy hair, skinny, short, covered in tattoos, weird glasses. He wore jeans and a black t-shirt—and bright red shoes.

“You have to have this wrong...” I told God. “I said a red bow not red shoes.” And then it occurred to me, maybe the red shoes were actually God’s version of a red bow.

Mr. Music leaned into the car window. “I’m not what you expected am I?” and then got into my car. “I’m not your type. You probably go for big beefy guys.” (which before then was probably close to the truth.)

I took a deep breath and said, “I don’t have a type. Not really.” and I argued with God a bit for making that the case. Red shoes. Darn. He couldn’t stop talking or touching me and rested a hand on my arm. That is when I saw the tattoo. The pure red tattoo on his hand that is very distinctive that I will not describe here, but I have never seen another like it. I only thought,” Darn it God! Stop it already!”

By the time we arrived at the restaurant, I was intrigued. I felt we made the oddest couple—Mutt and Jeff—and I worried everyone would look at me and think I was a cougar or a giant. During dinner, I forgot all about what anyone else would be or could be thinking and I never thought that thought again. He is singly the most interesting and strange person I have ever met. By the end of dinner, I was fascinated.

We went for a walk at the War Memorial and it started to drizzle. My hair got frizzier and so did his. We walked along holding hands, not noticing the rain was getting harder until we were racing through a downpour. He kissed me in the car and I drove him back to the train.

Mr. Music and I have very different lives that don’t seem to run in sync with each other. It doesn’t mean they never will. It simply means I don’t know. Yet, I still believe it was a designed move on divinity’s part to bring him to me. I learned an important lesson—that anything can happen. I learned that the one who is to be the one may not arrive in the package I imagined and that I most likely am not the package someone else specifically chose either. I learned that I should be moving wherever I am being led and be able to allow it all to unfold with a bit of faith that all is as it should e. I learned that I would have almost lost an experience if God hadn’t decided to put a big red bow on it and open up my world.

Monika M. Basile

A Heart to be Broken

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 any 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, we just wind up empty when we look around and notice that we stand in the spotlight alone and that the audience doesn’t give a damn anyway.

In the end of our days, those who have reached out and been enflamed by love, engulfed by love or even burned by love, will never say, “I regret loving you, or him, or her, or them...” I just don’t think anyone regrets it in the end. Those who are consumed by the regrets are those who didn’t take the chance. Those who never allowed themselves to get to close to anyone, those who kept all at an arms distance, those are the people who wish in the end they had been braver ad doe things a bit differently.

Some wonder if people can die of a broken heart. I tend to wonder if we can die of one that has been atrophied from lack of use. I would rather, if either were an option, to have the former happen . At least I would know my heart had been active in my life, my emotions had been used well and often. I would much rather risk that broken heart than one dying from never allowing anyone to touch me too deeply.

We can’t walk into loving someone with the thoughts of, “What if this ends? What if it’s not forever? ” We have to wander through it knowing instead that it is worth it to find out—no matter the outcome. We need to know that loving each other is most important, broken hearts are secondary and an unused heart is merely a waste of space. I am thankful. Though my heart may be a bit worse for wear, I am filling up every inch of it with loving and making sure not one spot is empty.

Monika M. Basile

Enough of the Fairy Tale

“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 waiting for all this time? It just doesn’t seem like it’s enough.”

I stopped talking for a few minutes. I was angry with the line of conversation. Eventually, I asked, “Are you expecting the Disney story? Can you possibly think that this is how life was ever supposed to be? I just want enough.”
I just want enough.

I never expected the fairy tale romance. I never really thought I needed that. Of course, it would be lovely, all those dreams coming true at the end, a diamond tiara and riding away on the white horse with the prince. Except, I’m a bit afraid of horses and I can’t even carry off a hat well enough to actually get away with a crown. And I would like a dream or two to be realized in the middle along the way.

I don’t blame Disney or romantic comedies for distorting our visions of real love or romance or relationships. We are free thinking folks in this world. If we cannot figure out the difference between reality and fantasy, we have bigger issues than we realize. If we can’t acknowledge when we actually have “enough” then our problem is not that we lack the man of our dreams. The problem is that we don’t recognize him.

A definition of more is: something of greater importance.

I am thinking those continuing to look for more have failed to see that what they have is important. Not perfect. All of the wonders in a relationship are not based on castles and fancy houses or exotic trips. They are based in love, respect, loyalty, kindness and all of that other good stuff that so many people don’t seem to appreciate. We need to be thankful when we have the blessing of actually having enough.

I am not suggesting settling for what you “almost” need or want. There is a difference between settling and believing you have enough. Settling causes a resentment. It also causes pain for the other party when they eventually figure out they are not what their partner considers to be enough. Knowing that you have enough, even more than enough, is a thankfulness.
For each person, what is considered to be enough, is a personal choice. I just think if someone can’t describe or define what is missing then maybe they want “more” of something that never existed in the first place. Maybe, what they seek is a fairy tale, a fantasy, a romance novel. Most likely, they will never be satisfied when a good man stands before them. They will be too busy looking over his shoulder waiting on a prince.


Monika M. Basile

Pretty Women

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 due. It is easier to see the fault and success in another’s 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 so. It really isn’t. It is so easy for others to tear us down until nothing appears in the mirror as it truly is. It is just as easy for someone to build us up and create something beautiful in us that we never saw before—something we don’t see in ourselves because we are too busy looking at the flaws that others have pointed out. It is simple to slip into what people call us or show us who they think we are. It just isn’t always the truth.

The difficulty is in finding out the motivation behind another’s words or actions. Are they attempting to make us feel bad about ourselves? Are they looking to control us with unkind words or deeds until we think they are right and that we are merely a waste in society? Or are they trying to show us who we really are, how they see us, how they wished we only were able to see ourselves? Are they seeing the wonder in each of us?

I know, dear daughters and almost daughters and sisters, and nieces and lovely friends in my life, I know you won’t believe me when I tell you what a true beauty you are. Because I know the magazines and articles and television and movies and catty, jealous women tell you otherwise. I know your mirror is playing tricks, it’s a fun house mirror and you are blurred by your own distorted vision of yourself. I do it too. I am just as blind as you and it ain’t a pretty sight most days.
I want to tell you that your body, however much you find it to be imperfect, is perfectly beautiful and that sexy and beautiful has nothing to do with being the thinnest or having the biggest boobs or being a certain color or having your hair and nails and make up done each day( a man actually told me this and I took it very much to heart). Pretty is as pretty does. People remember that line from Forrest Gump for a reason—because it is true.

I know that when a stranger says, “Wow! Your gorgeous!” you take it more to heart than if your mother says it. I know when a man thinks you are the most beautiful creature alive you believe him more than when I say it. I know this because I live that too. And I know too, what it feels like to have someone whittle away at every part of you until when you look in the mirror you see a monster. This is the point that I am trying to hit, the advice part:

There will be those who will try to destroy your confidence and point out every flaw and pick you apart until you are in pieces. Look at the motivation behind it. The only possible motivation is to make you less. That is true ugliness.

There will be those who tell you that you are lovely. Look at the motivation behind it. It’s a bit trickier. Either they want something from you and are sweet talking to get it. And sometimes, most times, they just love you and see you as you really are. Believe those people.

And finally, don’t be one of the first lot. Pretty really is as pretty does.


Monika M. Basile

The Opposite of Love is Indifference

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 has to do with life experience and what we get from it.

We all have cracks in us, wounds that haven’t completely healed or have left scars, tragedies that linger somewhere in the recesses of our minds. We all have been hurt and disappointed at one time or another. Everyone comes from a place of experience if they have bothered living at all. Our indifference is a choice. It is not about being so jaded by the world we don’t want to even feel it anymore. It is about allowing our tragedies to steal our joys. This is what creates the numbness, the indifference to continuing to experience or lives as deeply as we can.

There is still joy—no matter what the past or present or future has in store for us. We have choices still to love or to ignore it. We don’t have to settle for what we think is all we can have. I have told myself that lie before thinking that maybe this is all there is. And it is a lie to believe that. It is a joy stealing lie.

I am capable of great love. I have loved with the deepest passion. Why would I allow myself to be robbed of the opportunity of having someone give me back as much as I will freely and joyfully give by accepting that I am getting to old to have “emotions” about my love life?

I have dated younger men whom also hold the same belief, ‘Let’s not get emotions involved.” And to each man of any age who is this indifferent I bid adieu—with joy. Each has spared me an emotionless relationship and I appreciate that.

I am not completely ruled by emotions or my feelings. I have a thinking and reasoning brain. I can love and still end a relationship knowing that it doesn’t work simply because I love. I just don’t regret the loving part. It is who I am. It is who I always was and most likely who I will always be. I have every faith that there is someone else in this world who feels—allows themselves to feel—the same way. I just have to wait for everything to line up and meet him.

Monika M. Basile