How to Fall in Love

by Cecelia Ahern

while positivity is the seed of many a great thing, wishful thinking alone does not make a good foundation for marriage.

anger often deafens the ears to reality;

The books were my bibles, my go-to fix-it helpers when I was personally lost or needed solutions for troubled clients.

Looking back, I think I fell in love with being in love. And now my love affair with the dream was over.

‘Just so you know, suicidal is not a feeling. It’s a state of being. Sadness is a feeling, loneliness is a feeling, anger is a feeling. Frustration is a feeling. Jealousy is a feeling. Suicidal is not a feeling. You can have suicidal thoughts, but a thought is merely that: a thought. Our thoughts are ever-changing, because we put them there. Once you grasp the difference between suicidal thoughts and your feelings, you will start to understand your emotions. You can separate your suicidal thoughts from your feelings. You will not think, Today I want to kill myself. You will think, Today I feel angry that my sister skipped the country and left me to run the business. Then you’ll deal with your anger. Today I feel overwhelmed by the responsibility of my job. Then you’ll deal with feeling overwhelmed. I can help you learn how to get to the bottom of your suicidal thoughts, how to challenge these thoughts and regain control.

‘Where would we be without tomorrows? What we’d have instead would be todays. And if that was the case, with you, I’d hope for the longest day for today. I’d fill today with you, doing everything I’ve ever loved. I’d laugh, I’d talk, I’d listen and learn, I’d love, I’d love, I’d love. I’d make every day today and spend them all with you, and I’d never worry about tomorrow, when I wouldn’t be with you. And when that dreaded tomorrow comes for us, please know that I didn’t want to leave you, or be left behind, that every single moment spent with you were the best times in my life.’

‘You’re a fixer, Christine, but if you really want to help someone, to be a friend to them, sometimes you need to listen and let them do the work themselves. Be there for him. That’s all.’

I think it helps your memory of a person when people share stories,

I felt like a child who had been shouted at by an adult, that surprised, vulnerable, embarrassed feeling. And I felt alone, suddenly so very alone.

This pain would not last for ever; she would bear the scars of the experience and she would remember it for the rest of her life, no doubt it would influence every decision she made from this moment on. But where pain was, healing could come; where loneliness was, new relationships could be formed; where rejection was, new love could be found. It was a moment. And moments changed.

Life is a series of moments and moments are always changing, just like thoughts, negative and positive. And though it may be human nature to dwell, like many natural things it’s senseless, senseless to allow a single thought to inhabit a mind because thoughts are like guests or fair-weather friends. As soon as they arrive, they can leave, and even the ones that take a long time to emerge fully can disappear in an instant. Moments are precious; sometimes they linger and other times they’re fleeting, and yet so much could be done in them; you could change a mind, you could save a life and you could even fall in love.