another chance

Every time someone leaves your life, they take something away from you.

The first time, you feel like you'll never fall in love again. It's as if you've lost the ability to love. Although you may experience it again later, it never carries the same intensity as it did the first time.

The second time, because it took so much more courage to trust, when they leave, you lose your trust in people. To the point where you no longer trust even your own choices.

The third time, when someone new enters your life, you no longer welcome a new relationship so easily. You resist. You convince yourself it's pointless, that past relationships and past mistakes shouldn't be repeated. You become guarded with your emotions, and because you've been abandoned before, you no longer believe it when someone says they miss you.

After several people have come and gone from your life, and each time someone has taken a piece of you away forever, someone arrives—perhaps a little too late, perhaps for the hundredth time. Someone who seems remarkably close to the person you've always wanted. But after a while, as you sit through their disappointments and complaints, they tell you:

"You're indifferent. You don't trust anyone. You're not emotional. I never felt like you loved me."

You want to tell them that you once had all those things, but they were stolen from you. Instead, you choose not to add to their pain, and you remain silent.

Then the last person leaves your life, and this time they take something you may never be able to give anyone again:

The ability to give people another chance.