Loving from afar...

It's fun to sit back and reminisce. I try not to do it too often, but thinking back on what was and no longer is has its merits. If nothing else it will make you either smile or sigh if not both...

Today I was having coffee with my housekeeper and for whatever odd reason we started talking about Elia, my very first nanny. To be completely honest, I don't remember her at all. The only reason why I still remember her name is because of the story. As the story goes, she came into our lives when I was about 3 years old. She was black. I didn't like her because she was black. One day I threw my milk on the floor and yelled at her. She made me clean it up. I loved her every day thereafter and she loved me like I was her own child.

Anyway, after that conversation I started thinking about all the people I have loved and the strange ways I have come to love them and then the way they have sometimes walked out of my life. I must admit, I've been blessed. I have been blessed in that despite the fact that I bitch and whine and say that I hate people, I have definitely been loved much more than I have deserved.

I am not a nice person when it comes to strangers. Then when I meet people, I am quick to either hate them or love them. No middle ground, no compromise. Most people I dislike though and it's hard to make me change my mind because I am intense in that way; but a lot of people have made me change my mind because they have tested me, they have stood up to me, they have seen past the bitchiness and for that I am grateful. They have made me love them immensely.

But it has happened they leave. Leaving it's a part of life and it's something I do quite often but it's never easy. Whenever I've left, I've tried to carry people with me. I don't let go of people just because the distance grows, on the contrary, I hold on tighter. Most people don't do that though and it sucks because then you tend to forget. And you do forget until one day something triggers a memory and it makes you hurt because they are not there. and what's more, it makes you hurt because you don't know where they are.

And I wonder, is it better to think of them everyday and smile because you remember them or is it better to forget so you don't have to miss something good that you once had? It seems to me that forgetting is more functional so you don't have to live with a memory of what was and no longer is. The sad thing about that is that even if you forget, you don't ever forget the way it felt to be loved by them...