The endless resolutions

I have always tried, and failed to keep New Year's resolutions. They are incredibly appealing, they give us an opportunity to change those things in ourselves we dislike, and the time/space to admit it without criticism. However, they rarely work, at least not with me. It seems to me that what really changes you are the ideas, the wishes, the desires that grow roots in you, the ones that through experience, pain, love, time, make you suddenly realise you have changed.  Things that somehow, regardless of people telling you you have to change them, you do, because life tells you to. So it sticks, and it changes you. Slowly, but it does.

Being old as I am, mistakes have been made, but usually mistakes by themselves don't hurt. What hurts, really hurts its when you realise what you thought were the right decisions, turn your world upside down. It seems, at times, I keep stumbling over the same mistakes: love, friends, everything. But something sticks somehow. I use to let people walk all over me, popularity, prestige, getting into the best University. I let people hurt me for the sake of getting there. Friends, now I look back and there were few, truly there were few. I was just too much that not many stuck around. Those I have now, the ones that remained, and the ones I made since I treasure. My resolution for many years has been to love them even if they don't know it. Every single day I think of them and what I can do for them, who I can be for them.

But love. Oh love. Love will be the toughest lesson in my life. I haven't lacked lovers, and I have loved many. I would like to think many have love me, even if that love lasted for an instant. But the shit that sticks is not the lovers that you have had, is the love you have given yourself in the process, and I didn't, not really. I have stayed with people who wanted me to look different so I changed to keep them by my side. There were some who were scared by my intellect, so I became a housewife. I died in those relationships, I became a shell. Maybe in their eyes I am no better, but in mine, even if getting over them took the life out of me, I am better, I am still me. A broken intellectual, a mad woman, growing alone, but always herself. It may be a foolish exercise but I look at their lives now, all of them, and if I had remained I could only be a shadow bleeding out into them. My teenage love; the one who through pain made me an adult; the joyful one who will forever be my best friend; the one who could never love who I really was; and the one who broke me. All of them, I see their lives, and I don't belong. I only belong in mine. And if there is one thing I know is that if somebody comes along, sweeping me of my feet will not be enough. I am mad, and I am phenomenal. And I love so easily. But a heart put together so many times is wise, and you will have to be kind, and honest.

And that is how long my new year's resolution lasted. My heart was stolen before I could finish this...