Life As I Know It

I love the sound of rain… maybe not accompanied by thunder and lightning. But nonetheless I love the sound of rain. When I was younger to get through really bad storms I let my imagination wonder. I seriously believed lightning was Jehovah taking pictures, thunder was Jehovah dancing, and rain, during sunlight, was Jehovah’s happy tears. It sounds silly now. But it was those thoughts that got me through some really scary storms. Long ago I had a habit of running out into the rain. Yes, there was once a time that I didn’t care if my new satin pump stilettos would get mud, that my straight hair would go wavy and frizzy. Or that I might get sick, or ruin dry clean clothes. Then again I was 5, make up or the way I looked wasn’t a priority and I’m pretty sure nothing happens to leather patented Mary Jane shoes. My mom would have a fit, like any mother would. But if I was at my grandmothers, she’d go right out with me. She embraced every crazy idea of mine. Have you ever danced in the rain? ...

Here is one of the many requests I have still to write about: We’ll remain friends. That’s the promise many of us make after a break up occurs. But only a few people really learn how to get there. I saw him at the party Did he say hi? Yes And then he proceeded to ignore me the rest of the night Well at least you got a hello When a relationship ends its hard to imagine yourself with out that person. Especially if you’ve been a half of someone for a very long time. So maybe that’s why we use that phrase. Friends. We’d rather settle for some type of human contact with that person, at that moment, than completely ripping them out of our lives. Now I’m not saying this always happens but in my experience … you don’t come close to remaining friends. Maybe acquaintances who acknowledge each other from time to time. "I just can’t. I know what I said, that we’d still be friends, but I can’t see her and be in the same room with her. It still hurts" I once left an ex in the middle of ...

Note: This is for those who have flooded my private messages and inbox with “where are you, where are the blogs, and are you still alive?” Here I am. “Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.” —Vaclav Havel (b. 1936), poet, playwright, 1st president of Czech Republic So much to say and not enough ink… By: Miriam Soltero I sit in the waiting room of the surgical team clinic for a follow up. To pass the time I grab the closest newspaper and proceed to remove every section except the editorials and obituaries. As I read about the legacy of people I can’t help but think how hard it must be to sum up the life story of a person in 200 words or less. Because you can talk about where they were born, about what they accomplished, and you can even speak about those left behind; but between the period and the next word there are stories untold. My fav...

"So what did you buy?" – I asked. I found myself accompanying a friend to return some unwanted items. "This" - and she proceeded to pull out a Bad yellow version of a cashmere sweater. "It’s… It’s… … … What where you thinking?" "I’m not exactly sure… it seemed like a good idea when I bought it." "And then?" "And then I put it on…" I laughed. "You know what I wish?" She said sighing. "What?" "I wish all things in life were returnable… like men" And I laughed… Shopping can bring instant gratification. Buying something new, something you like, brings happiness to any dedicated shopper. Instant gratification. The beginning of a relationship, or getting to know someone, has the same effect. But try it on for size, walk a mile in the shoes, try to zip up the dress and you might find yourself sighing and facing disappointment. In shopping if you lose your heart to something that is wrong for you, you can...

“Love is like a game of poker. You have to know when to “all in” and when to back out or else you’ll lose everything.” My friend read from the back of her Starbucks cup. “That’s funny” “What if you don’t know how to play poker?” “You don’t know how to play poker?” “No.” “Then you “Go fish”’ And we laughed as we discussed the rules of poker. Later that day I got to thinking about relationships. When it comes to falling in love you cannot approach it cautiously. It will not wait for you to arm yourself. Love, like gambling, has risks involved. In fact Love might be the greatest of all risks. Maybe that’s why some people thread slowly through life. Avoiding the closeness risk brings. Never taking chances out of fear of losing everything. Never realizing that by not taking those risks they lose their chance to win at love. “You should never gamble what you’re not willing to lose” Someone told me that once. No one should gamble away their opportunity at love. But there are those who risk lo...

It is with time that you learn that it’s the friends that listen to you complain when you call at two in the morning, because your thinking about how much you hate him, the friends that are willing to sit through your “memory box” of old letters, gifts, and pictures and cry with you, and the friends that sit through a conversation you’ve had 10 thousand different times before and not complain that matter. So there we were in the middle of what seemed to be a tradition now. My closest girlfriends and I together, at my house, after one of them had suffered a recent heartbreak. That’s what we did when one of us was in need of serious wallowing. We surroundeded ourselves by our remedies of heartbreak. Chips, chocolate, pizza, champagne, lemon and pickles. And of course assorted pints of Häagen-Dazs, And we talked and talked till there were no more words to say. Or till the pain was overpowered by laughter or serious heartburn. And then we watched a movie. A good classic movie that reminds ...

There it was their whole story down to one box. A box full of pictures, CDs, memories, and gifts. When she was done gathering all the things that belonged to yesterday she thought long and hard about what she was to do with it. When a relationship ends it’s a ritual to remove all things that remind you of him/her. Many people frantically gather their things and or even burn them. They bring down the pictures, remove all the gifts, fold away all the memories, like if by removing all the physical objects they could do away with yesterday. But does it really make a difference if you have that box hidden under your bed, collecting dust, or it being far away at a landfill, becoming dust? Can you really throw away yesterday by simply removing all the things that remind you of it? Or do we kid ourselves by thinking its easier to forget this way – after all… isn’t healing a process? She didn't want to forget, put it past her, like it never happened. She'd rather not pretend that song ...