hypocrisy

For the last month, I've been on the fence about the decision I made to let someone back into my life. The reason for my uncertainty really has nothing to do with me and him; actually, we're doing fine. It's everyone else in my life who are making me wonder whether I made the right choice in forgiving (but not forgetting - let's make that clear). When things got all messed up last fall, I was miserable, and those around me told me I should be happy. Now it's winter, I feel calm and resolved, but everyone tells me I'd be better off without him in my life. I know that the people who care about me don't want to see me hurt again. But it really hurts when I'm trying to make amends, keep the peace, and let things just be normal, and they shoot me dirty looks when I talk to him or walk away when he approaches me.

Fuck. Only now, as I'm writing this, do I realize I'm a total hypocrite. I do the exact same thing to my friend's girlfriend, whom I despise.

What makes us think we have the right to determine other people's happiness? Perhaps it's because we know our loved ones so well; we can see their strengths and weaknesses, we understand their habitual patterns, we know what they deserve - all the things that lead us to protect and care for each other. Though, we can never really understand why people feel the way they do. Yeah, some of it can be attributed to genes or environment or personal history. But those are only a few pieces of the puzzle. First impressions, gut instincts, and chemistry take part in it too, and those all provide us with strong intuitions that we cannot ignore. So we have to learn to respect our friends' decisions, even if we think - or know - that it's the wrong one. Think about it: we spend years demanding that our parents let us live our own lives, but then we turn around and criticize our friends for making what we think are poor decisions and warn them about the perils that they will undoubtedly face. It is important to make our own mistakes so that we can learn from them. How are we supposed to come to know the true value of happiness and love without experiencing sadness or pain?

Moral of the story: keep your nose out of other people's business. Basically, keep your nose out of my business. My nose is enough.

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EDIT: Okay, so, literally two minutes after I published this post, I went to YouTube to watch a video of an aspiring musical artist, Gabe Bondoc, at the recommendation of a friend. The video was of an original song titled, "Summertime." Aside from the song and performance being pretty damn good, the lyrics just really hit home and made me recall one of those memories which, despite all of the shit that happens to ruin everything surrounding it, that one amazing memory manages to miraculously survive, untarnished. It's things like that, those things that are my reasons that no one else can possibly understand.

I met you in the summertime

And I never had a summer better than the one I met you in...