On Darker Waters

Sometimes, you have to distance yourself from the things you love and the things that hurt you. This is not because you are giving up. In fact, this is because you want to hold on to it longer.

When you are hurt, it is okay to need some time on your own. You need to find that place in your heart where everything is peaceful. You need to forget what hurts and move on. You need to come back on top from being under.

Do not be pressured to forgive. When you are ready, you can do so. Forgiveness is not a right that any person can demand from someone else. It is a gift. Just because the other person asks for your forgiveness and is sorry about things does not mean you need to be able to forgive. If you need time, then have it. If the person is really sorry, he will understand. If the person really cares, he can wait.

Do not be afraid to be by yourself. This may be the best thing you need, in fact. A person gets hurt because they have feelings, because they care, because they give a part of themselves away. When you get hurt, it is only right to find that part of yourself again, so you can forgive, so you can forget, so you can be happy again.

If you feel that your well is running low, do not hesitate to close your doors for a while. Remember, most people will rather gather water from a deep, drying well than take the time to fill it. Evaluate the people around you, so you would know who runs you dry and who’s worth running dry for.

Everybody knows that love is a gift, but not everybody remembers that fact. Sad as it is, it means that the people in your life will hurt you, repeatedly, for as many times as you can imagine. There is no perfect situation where everybody you love will only make you happy. That is the balance of nature. You will love people, and people will love you too. But some of these people will hurt you as well. The goal is not to find the ones who will not hurt you. The goal is to be strong enough to weather rough winds and storms until the skies clear up, and you can sail the deep blue waters again.

Listen to Me When Your Heart Breaks

The Heart of the Matter by India Arie

"It's about forgiveness…" This is absolutely the best phrase in the entire song. Basically, the song is about a woman who got a phone call from her friend telling her that her ex-lover has already found a new love.

My favorite line actually has a universal truth in it. Breakups are always about forgiveness, even when there's no love anymore.

Forgiveness for the hurt we cause each other.

Forgiveness for the wrongs we have done to each other.

Forgiveness for the things we could have done but failed to do.

It's about forgiving the person who has hurt you the most. It's about moving on. It's about not giving up the hope that someday somehow, we will find somebody new, somebody we may not anymore love as deep as we have loved someone before but somebody who deserves all the love we can give from the placed back pieces of our broken hearts.

Rise by Gabrielle

I'm not really sure if this song could actually help me get over a breakup, but it's worth listening to. The chorus goes "Look at my life; look at my heart.I have seen them fall apart, and now I'm ready to rise again."

They call it a breakup for a reason. When two people decide to go on separate ways, there are always devastating effects on at least one of them. When you go through a break up, it's not just the relationship that get's broken.

Hearts. Dreams. Lives. They all get broken too.

Unfortunately, wallowing in self despair and depression won't help. No matter how much your heart is broken, the world does not stop for your grief. The best we can do is to look into ourselves, find our inner strength, realize that even we are hurting, the future is still on our side. A day will come when our hurts will heal. When we are ready to rise again, we will find that, in love, no one ever wins without losing a few things along the way.

Doin’Just Fine by Boyz 2 Men

This song may not always make you feel better, but you'll have one good cry when you listen to it. Everybody needs to have a hell of a good cry when they go through a break up. Everybody needs to be able to get it all out of their system.

Breakups are hard. Songs usually work as a catalyst to getting over breakups or just to help you find it in yourself to take a good look at the relationship and realize if the break up will someday be a blessing in disguise or if the relationship is actually still worth fighting for.

Truth, Lies, and in Between

Lies. There's only black and white, right? You lie or you don't lie. There shouldn't be any middle ground. But that's impossible. It always has a huge gray area in between. Everybody always has an excuse why they tell lies.

Personally, I try to tell the truth. I always tell the truth, even if it's inconvenient. However, I am not a tactless person who will tell the whole truth without considering whether the person who hears it will love it or not.

They always say that the truth sets us free. I don't see that sometimes. There are instances wherein, we are better off not knowing certain things. We let our children go on believing in Santa Claus and the tooth fairy so as not to take away their innocence. We let them continue with the fantasy of prince charming and sleeping beauty. We do it because we don't want to ruin the fun from childhood. We want them to stay as blissfully innocent for as long as we can protect them.

That goes the same for lies. We don't always tell the truth not only because we want to protect ourselves but also because we want to protect the people we care about. If you intend to tell the truth only because we want to clear out our darkened conscience, then we need to think again. If we have committed mistakes and want to come clean just so we can live without the guilt that haunts us every sleepless night, I don't think we even deserve the freedom we get from telling the truth.

Yes. Honesty is the best policy. However, if your honesty is due to selfish reasons, then what good does it bring? Seriously. Do they really deserve the heartache? Should we tell them the truth, even if it hurts or destroys them, just so we can go back to pretending nothing happened and live our own little lives as if we never hurt anyone? I don't think so.

I would never tell the truth, but if I deserve to carry the guilt, I'd gladly do it. I'd gladly live with the guilt than live to see myself destroy the people I love only because I want to keep myself as clean as an unused white sheet. I don't think I would ever be happy anyway.

But that's all just me, you know. If you don't agree with me, you don't have to. We all have our own ways of seeing things. What would you actually do yourself? When do you think is the right time to tell a lie? Or is there never a right time for lies? I'd love to know.