If I’m being honest with myself, the chapter ended a long time ago. It’s just taken me half a lifetime to be able to accept it. It’s a hard lesson to learn, the one where you finally accept that you cannot make people love you, you cannot make people want to spend time with you, you can’t make people answer the phone, and you can’t make people find the courage to ask questions, to have the conversations, that lead to truths they don’t want to know.

People don’t like the truth, especially when it makes them look back and realized that life has been a lie. Not many have the courage, and it does take courage. It’s not good or bad, it just prevents you from living an authentic life. When you base your opinions on what you hear or what you’ve been told, and you never make the effort (which takes courage) to speak with the person the stories are about, you do a grave injustice not only to yourself but to the other person. You will never know what you missed. You invalidate not only the other person involved but yourself. That is the travesty of it all.