These will all be stories one day. Do we realize that? I’m not sure how we could not. We’re talking about them already.

The first time you fell for someone – the first time you let yourself fall. When vulnerability was like a sore throat you didn’t want to admit you had so you tried to pretend it wasn’t there – tried to pretend your body didn’t need you to sit back and relax for a little while. We’ll say it’s too soon and not yet and don’t make a big deal but don’t look now, you’ve been writing this story for a little while now.

The time you fell for a friend – the time she fell for a friend – the time he fell for your friend – when tension was surrounded by caution tape that everybody talked about and nobody understood. We’re better at talking than we are at understanding the very stories we’re telling, so maybe somewhere in the talking we forget that we have some fraction of control over what we’re writing.

Do you remember the break up? The falling apart, the building up, the make-up. Four seasons twice repeated until the colder weather brought warmer hearts and something about a fresh start. I don’t know if these are little stories beginning and ending one after the other, or maybe the story that started over two years ago simply kept going.

Some of these stories end before they’ve barely begun – they end in drama and poor conversation and shrugs. We push them to the archives and pull them out in gossip about old housemates and stronger words than maybe should have been used. We pull them out and realize we’ve been holding on to alternate pages this whole time when the published copy had been lost only moments after it was written.

Some of them will last longer than we could ever imagine, some might even last forever. Chapters upon chapters exceeding all of our expectations. One day we will let go a little more than the day before. We’ll change our lives in a couple of words – a couple of wrong words – a couple of right words, and months from now everything will look different but we’ll still talk about the way it was.

These will all be stories one day and some of them we have no control over. Last week I saw a car crash; It just flipped over, like it was made of anything less than metal because surely something that heavy, can’t flip that fast – can’t be thrown so far. And we’ve already posted stories, we’ve already told this tale, in our own ways, first responders and hand-holders. I sat in the back and when I saw the car flip, I looked away.

These will all be stories one day and sometimes we forget that as people we are made up of hundreds upon hundreds of pages, thousands upon thousands of interwoven stories. They’re messy. Half finished, with some painfully short or painfully long. But mostly just unfinished. We experience the mundane and the extraordinary so frequently that sometimes they almost blur together. We experience the things we have control over and the things that we don’t so frequently that I think we forget we have any control at all – because so often, we don’t.

We will grow up – we have to grow up, we will take chances and move beyond comfort zones by building bridges and burnings others. We will witness car crashes and first loves and fights and we will build stories over and over again. So while we’re here, while the stories are mid-page and we could not whole-heartedly tell you what the first line of the next chapter says, maybe we should all forgive each other first. Maybe sometimes even before the apology – maybe just with a bit more honesty. Maybe we should tell each other it’s not okay, when it’s not okay, and use as many words as we can until we really get our point across otherwise nobody else is ever going to understand. Maybe we should stop waiting for somebody to ask, and we should just say – say – say. Maybe we should just be honest about how we feel even if we don’t understand it ourselves because loving someone can be as simple as holding someone’s hand and telling them it’s okay – you’re okay – we’re okay.

These will all be stories one day and I know half of them we have no control over, but for the one’s we do – the one’s we can affect in any small way – what do we want them to say?