She drove me nuts...

There is a sweetness that lies hidden, birthed from the desolation and desperation of being done. A mighty force that comes to bear to open the path forward, which would never be possible otherwise. The horrifying truth is necessary. It hurts. It is ugly. And yet it is beautiful, for it paves the way forward.

• Do we know what it takes to move forward?
• When the grand gestures die, what tips the scales?
• Is change a zero-sum game with nothing to gain without pain?

— Who is she? #recognize

Oh my, she stole my breath. She crushed my heart and left me in shambles. I sadly never wanted to meet her in the first place out of fear of what could happen. And now that I have, I hope I do meet her again, but probably without all the agony.

The harsh reality is, though, that it is probably not even possible.

She is not a lady. She is not a nymph luring me into a valley of desires. She is the beginning. She is the rush of the start birthed from the agony of the end.

She is “Starting.”

I know it is a verb, and it is not easy to wrap your head around it, but I cannot describe it any other way. Because, like a relationship with ebb and flow, we transition in life, kicking off new beginnings with heartache that we should expect but never do.

— Everyone got it wrong. #understand

And sadly, no one ever tells you what it takes. Everyone lies. Either out of ignorance or lack of understanding, but no one tells you what starting looks like.

The pull of the NEW brightens a glimmer in our eyes yet sadly overshadows the death of the incumbent state. Like a mother giving birth, every new life starts in the pain of labor to pave the way for a newborn to come into this world.

That moment should have taught the lesson of beginnings, yet it didn’t.

I will spare you the gory details because, in reality, they were not so gory except for me. They were small things that bothered me, which frankly were completely insignificant in the larger scheme of things, yet they still mattered.

The irony persists where the insignificant becomes so critical that it changes everything. It was not the monumental blow that tipped the scales but the feather falling on the scale at that exact moment for it to tip.

Watch out for the feather because it will knock you down harder than the mightiest blows, mostly because you never saw it coming. Its softness and lightness will muse you until it is too late.

— The change we want. #accept

And we all want change. We all want to start, and that is the beauty of life — a new start and beginning sought at every threshold.

Out of the bad came out good, not in positivity or cheerful naivety but in power and strength carried by a will unforgeable and undeniable except by the painful moment of truth that birthed it.

The cry bellowed, and in its resonance, energy surged in me, not knowing what it would unleash in its wake. It might be a reckoning or a decisive movement that is necessary. Either way, it was liberating.

I could say it was an exchange of pain for the courage to take the next step, but it wasn’t. What it was, I could go on and on about for days, but I won’t. I will resist because what I want to leave you with is this: Starting needs the ending to give it the final nudge to finally be able to begin. Without that surge, we never move forward.

This time around, I am as ready as I can be to fall for her again. She will still hurt me, I know, but I can’t resist — a nymph, she was, after all.

Until next time,
Carlo