A Journal Entry | October 18, 2019 | Chronicles of the Heart
Yesterday I read a story about a girl and about her love. Love for a boy who she fell for much too quickly, and love for a new beginning of which brought her more excitement than she’d felt in years. It was a new adventure, a promise of a better future, a story of love much like the others where the doe-eyed main character dives in head-first, believing that this was it, that this was the real deal. As I skimmed through the pages, I watched her use line after line, page after page, to contain her excitement; a charming boy with soft lips and pretty words, a vibe that couldn’t be matched, and promises far heavier than either of them could carry. I smiled at how foolish it all seemed, how far away it all felt. But as I read, and watched her fall deeper and deeper in love, giving away more and more of herself, my heart stung.
You see I knew this story; I knew the beginning, the middle and the end. And almost instinctively like an older sister who knows better, I looked toward that girl and felt an urge to protect her, to reach out to her, to wrap my arms around her, and cradle her against my chest. I wanted to pull her down from that fictional high and save her from what was coming. My heart ached for her, she was so naive, so blind, dancing along the jagged edges of a tremendously high cliff, having no idea what it felt like to slip. Tears escaped my eyes as I gripped onto each painful word, standing by helpless, having to watch it all unfold; I watched the hurt creep into her life, knocking her off the edge, I watched her mighty fall into what could only have been an abyss, and I watched her hit the ground and break. I closed the journal and placed it back on its shelf.
Scars are a funny thing, no matter how much time goes by they still sting, even when they appear to be completely healed. I love reading my journals because I take value in understanding how my experiences have shaped me, how much I’ve grown and how far I’ve come, but it comes at a price. Even though I’m still trying to figure out what love is, each time I try and piece my heart back together again it becomes a little stronger, and a little wiser. But even with every lesson I can’t help but hope that the next one will be the last one; the one to put all others to shame, the one that’ll make me so grateful that it never worked out with anyone else. As silly as this is, a part of me wonders if there’s some future version of me reading these entries, just as I read the ones of my past, wishing she too could reach out to me. Only she’d wish to pull me into her arms and tell me to not lose faith, tell me that all of this will soon fade into an insignificant memory because what was coming, would be a love story that even I couldn’t write. That my story was just beginning, and that I hadn’t even scratched the surface of the life that I would live. She’d want to hug me tight and tell me to just enjoy the ride, because this story right here, my story, would definitely be, one for the books.
-Vidhya