Stacy Davis
The Paw Print
When we’re little we are told if we love something to set it free, and if it loves us it will come back. So what happens when it doesn’t come back? We’re left sitting on a lonely couch staring out an empty window at a lifeless world wondering why we let the one thing we loved fly away.
I’m here to say my proposal for a new life lesson is that we start teaching people it’s ok to hold on to what they love and fight for it with all they’ve got. If it leaves, at least you go down trying.
The day I learned this lesson was a hard one. Well, it was hard up until the moment I decided I was going to start fighting for what I loved–but before that the weakness in my heart made it almost unbearable to live. To take this even further back, the day I learned to fight for love was a hard one, but as I am writing I am now realizing that the day I was taught to be weak was even harder. It ruined me.
“If it’s meant to be, it will be,” my dad spoke softly to me. I knew he was only trying to help, but when you’re a thirteen-year-old girl experiencing heart break there is not much that can help. But—somehow—those words slowly sunk in. Perhaps because he said them every day or perhaps because I needed to believe something so the pain would stop. Either way, they sunk in. “If it’s meant to be it will be.” On this day, and the weeks following, I learned to be weak. I learned to let things “be” when and if they were meant to. I learned to let people walk in and out of my life in the blink of an eye. I learned to watch them go and whisper to myself, “If it was meant to be, it would have been.” I learned this so well that I learned it about my dad.
What I didn’t know all those years was that I could actually make things be as I wanted them to. That’s a lie; I did know this, but I chose not to believe it. How could I have so much control over my own destiny? Well, the day my dad died I realized I could control what and who was meant to be. Sitting as his funeral, cold and lifeless, his words echoed in my ear—“if it is meant to be, it will be…” I refused to believe him anymore. I would not accept that he was gone, it could not be.
It’s ok to hold on to what you love and fight for it with all you’ve got. If it leaves, at least you go down trying. The day my heart broke when I was thirteen-years-old and my dad tried to help, I told him to stay out of my life. He didn’t. I persisted. And when he finally walked away I let him. I let it be and I won’t make that mistake again.
What’s Been Said…