Lying

How do you get over yourself?

How do you move on?

Why do bad things happen to you and no one else?

My 17 year old daughter asked me this today over the phone

Mind you, I know you are thinking “how come you have a daughter who is 17 and you are only 24?”

I have held her when she was a baby, I have seen her as she discovered the world with her big bright eyes.

I have taken her to proms and helped her crash study for history and English.

And today I have seen her as her heart broke for the first time.

And I let her talk.

I wanted to comfort her but I remembered that there is a pain that cannot be comforted.

That first heart break.

That numb pain, where you feel your world crashing in a single instant,

When you cannot take it and cannot stop crying.

Where you feel that this person is the only one you can ever be with and no one else could take his place.

I wanted to tell her that there will be others, that she will love again.

That she will wear that white dress for the man she loves

But deep down I felt that I would be lying if I said that.

She will never love that way again.

She will feel love again.

But she will be cautious, hesitant, calculating, manipulating her own heart into believing things that may or may happen, things she may or may not feel.

Her scale will go up with each failure, demanding things she may or may not need.

She will be sheltered within herself ,guarded, isolated within her own broken heart.

The truth is I lied to her today, told her to calm down and forget about him, knowing all too well she will
be looking for him in the arms of every man she is with.

I didn’t want to tell her that her heart will sink when she runs into her first love. That the first woman she will learn to hate is the one he is going to marry.

As I spoke to her I regretted all my lies.

you see, for he walked in, my first and only man,my first love,my first dream, and yes, he was holding her hand and he was smiling.

After 745 days, when I had last held his hand.

My heart still sank.

And I still lied.