gentle reader, this post is brought to you by the girl. she posted this earlier today and i asked if i could use it as a guest post...

Cheating. I’ve been thinking a lot about why people do it because it makes literally no sense to me; if you aren’t happy then just leave, don’t knowingly put someone through that pain. That’s the way I look at it because I don’t understand it, but I’ve been trying to figure it out. I was talking with a friend last night, and I finally figured it out. In order to understand why people cheat, I would have to be the cheater not the one that gets cheated on; I would much rather be the one that gets cheated on because I can go to sleep at night with a clean conscience, and I have no guilt hanging over my head. From my point of view, being through the eyes of being cheated on in almost every one of my relationships, I see it this way: the way the guy treated me is a direct reflection of how he feels about himself. Think about it – happy people treat others good, jealous people try to drag others down, unhappy people are just mean, cheaters are in insecure, etc. Sometimes it’s hard to see it that way when you are in the situation, but that is simply what it comes down to. Now I’ve figured out that you can go one of two ways – you can dwell on it, and allow it to drag you down OR you can allow it to make you explode, you turn that pain into motivation and you allow it to drive you. You are going to blindly fall head over heels in love with someone completely wrong for you, most likely more than once, good. Fall in love with someone wrong for you because if you’re anything like me that’s your biggest fear; having your heart unexpectedly ripped out is the scariest feeling in the world but once you overcome it you’ve won, you’ve conquered your biggest fear, and you’ve killed the demon. Once you conquer your biggest fear, you can conquer anything. We have to fall in love so we can fall out of love so we can genuinely fall in love with ourselves that much more. Everything happens for a reason, sometimes that’s hard to accept because we wait for that reason to appear; we may never know the reason or we may figure out that reason in one of those “ah ha moments”. The universe has an incredible way of allowing things to work out exactly as they should; so don’t plan or expect things to happen because there may be a turn in events that drives you in the opposite direction that you never saw coming.

bam! how the hell did she get so smart?

perhaps it is from having your heart ripped out...not once but twice in a very short time.

perhaps from listening to family and friends when that happens.

perhaps from introspective when that happens.

perhaps from learning from the past and learning how to move forward and slay those effing demons.

yaaaa, that's the ticket.

rock on, girl, rock on!

you've got this!

i am grateful:

• for the chronicle to have its first guest post!
• for an awesome daughter
• for a great mom that taught me how to be a great mom
• for new monday traditions with the girl
• to be able to cheer the girl on