The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic

by Breanne Randall

“I can never decide if I should try to be nicer like you, or if I should try and make you more of a stone-cold bitch like me,” Raquel said as Annabelle took a seat at a table across the diner. “I’m not nice,” Sadie countered. “You would literally let someone shit on your doorstep and then apologize for not cleaning it up fast enough.”

“People should like you for you. Not what you do for them. You’re always afraid people are going to leave, so you do anything you can to make them stay.”

“When you stop being so afraid of being alone, you’ll realize your worth and stop letting people walk all over you.”

‘Guard your heart, for from it flows the wellspring of life,’” she quoted. “But don’t guard it so closely that you’ll never get hurt. Because if you can’t get hurt then you can’t love,

“Your problem,” Raquel went on, “is that you pretend to be a hard ass. You pretend you don’t care. But you never let go of hope. Because if there’s even the tiniest chance that someone can be redeemed, you’ll never let go.”

But I do have a hard time letting go. Despite all the heartbreak. And damn, the hope is what kills you, you know? That’s why I have to smother it. No smoke. No embers. Stamp it out.” “My dad says that the thing about the past is that when there’s pain, that’s all you remember. But when there’s joy, even if it’s a little bit, you forget all the shitty things that went along with it. I mean I added the ‘shitty’ part because you know he’d never say that. But that’s why people make terrible decisions over and over again.”

Remember you’re the only one that can define who you are.

“They say that in a relationship there’s always the lover and the loved. But I don’t think that’s right. I think it changes. Sometimes you’re the one who loves more, and other times you’re the one who needs to be loved. That’s what a relationship is. Bracing the other person when they need it. Love is knowing you have open arms to fall back into.”

“She’s just afraid he’ll leave her. We do crazy things for love.” “That’s not love, honey,” her mother argued. “That’s loneliness. Trying to hold onto someone like that, it’s control.

And Sadie knew, in that moment, that being afraid didn’t make someone weak or a coward. Doing something in spite of heartbreak and fear, that’s where courage came in. Do it afraid, she told herself.

“Hold on to hope no matter the cost, because as long as there’s hope, everything else is just the unfortunate side effects of heartbreak and magic.”