Friendship

Feelings are strange, uncontrollable things.
Feelings set the course for our relationships, our friendships, and ourselves.
Feelings are like the compass we use to navigate when we are unsure, like the flashlight we use to illuminate the dark unknown. We resent the compass when it leads us astray; get angry with the flashlight when its beam is too dim. Yet we would be even more lost without them.

Relationships are founded in and strengthened by our feelings. When I say relationships I mean friendships too, because they are the same as romantic relationships, if not more significant and important.

Friendships teach us how to trust; how to rely on other people when we need them most and to appreciate them for always being there for us. They teach us how to communicate; how to say when something small is bothering us so it does not become something big. Friendships teach us to give each other space, but to know we will always be there for one another. They teach you how to form other relationships and still have faith in the one, or few, best friends that mean the most to you. They teach you how to overcome, and to always hold on to those you love.
Romance comes and goes but friends only leave you when you give up on them. So don’t give up, it’s as simple as that.

A friendship is like a map. If you can form a caring, trusting, mutually exclusive friendship you are drawing your own map for other relationships in life.
A friend teaches you to love a sibling.
A friend teaches you to love romantically. Because if you cannot be friends with a partner first your map is incomplete, you will get lost (but that’s not to say you won’t have fun along the way).

Friends are the most important people in your life; so unless you have a very good reason to never, ever let them go. If they are true friends they won’t let you go either.

Aunty Angela

Life is fleeting.
It doesn’t need to be said yet it is often forgotten.
Life is precious and wonderful and painful and unfair and fleeting.

It may seem never ending at times but don’t be fooled. It’s gone in the blink of an eye. You take a breath and you’re in college, you shed a tear and you have your first job, you laugh and you have a family and then you blink and it’s all over.
Life can so easily be stolen by a vicious murder or equally vicious cancer.

This does not mean that it is pointless, or to be taken for granted. This means quite the opposite in fact.
It means that every moment you spend with your husband or your mother or your sister or your son should be a moment of unquestionable love. You do not have to say it every minute of every day, but show it. Make sure the people that you love know that you love them so that when you are gone they remember you with happy tears in their eyes and in their hearts.
It means that you should never take the people in your life for granted because you do not know how long they will be in your life.
It means that you should live with the intention and the attitude that you do not and will not be taken for granted.
It means you should make the most of every smile you smile and every tear you cry because you never know when they will be your last and the overwhelming sensation of being full of emotion is what makes life worth living.

I have been so lucky in my life, so fortunate to know some truly amazing individuals. I was lucky enough to know one of the most beautiful women, inside and out, that anyone could hope to meet. She was strength, she was courage, and though I never told her she was and always will be my inspiration. I loved her in life, and I will continue to love her in death.
We should all be so lucky to know an amazing person like this woman. We should always tell them how much we appreciate them.

Tell your role model, tell your mother, tell your friends.
And live each day like it’s your last.

Rest in Peace Aunty Angela.

First Snow.

There’s something so hopeful in the first snow of the year, so full of promise. Yet there is something sinister in the biting cold. Isn’t that how life is? A wonderfully exciting mix of hopeful and sinister, and guessing which will come next.

There is something blissfully sweet in tasting fresh snow on your tongue.

As I slipped and slid through the already melting snow on the sidewalk in front of my new home many of my new friends asked if this was my first time seeing snow.
No, I replied, but I always consider it my first time anyway.

Isn’t it nice to think that as you watch the delicate fat flakes drift slowly to the earth that this is the first time you are ever seeing something so beautiful? Isn’t it a nice feeling that the rush of excitement you feel as you don your jacket and gloves (or in my case socks) and rush out into the cold to warm your heart with childish play is as if for the first time, every time?

There is something so hopeful in the promise of the first snow of the year, barely fresh on the ground before it is in your hands and you’re hurling it at your friend. Something so beautiful about how the snowflakes settle in your eyelashes and make the whole world look, if only for that fleeting moment, perfect.
In that moment time stands still. It is not the first snow of the year, but the only snow of the year, and every snow of the year. It is the winter you spent snowed in in Italy, and the surprise snow in Cyprus, and the first snow you ever saw and the last snow you will ever see all at once. It is hopeful, it is infinite.

And then a snowball hits you and the rush brings you back to the present, and the cold catches up with you and you can’t feel your cheeks or your hands, but you are happy.