TROUBLE

TROUBLE IS A BIG WORD.

WITH POTENTIALLY BIG CONSEQUENCES.

UGLY, HURTING CONSEQUENCES.

TO YOURSELF, BUT ALSO TO PEOPLE YOU CARE ABOUT -- LOVELY INDIVIDUALS YOU NEVER INTENDED TO HARM, BUT WHO CAN NEVER BE FULLY PROTECTED FROM THAT PAIN.

TROUBLE.

TROUBLE can be the mundane stuff we have to deal with every day, like plugged toilets...

OR FINDING yourself in a rather precarious position and discovering, due to unforseen circumstances, that you're completely out of your element and having to figure out how you're going to get yourself out of it...

OR MAYBE, in a fit of poor judgment and caught in a brain cramp of bravado, trying something that maybe you shouldn't have and having one of those DOH! moments...and realizing you've bitten off more than you can chew.

SOMETIMES, trouble can be manufactured purposely, with the most devious thoughts in mind and without any regard for the feelings or future of the unfortunate victim of that deviousness.

BUT THE TROUBLE I'm thinking about today is the trouble with love, or at least the precarious process of trying to arrive at that state of bliss between two adults with every hope of being together.

THE HOPE of fitting together like a hand in a glove, of knowing at the depths of their souls that he or she is THE ONE, of feeling so light as a feather together.

And the big step of taking the risk to open up and to put their hearts on the line to make that happen, of putting themselves on the railway tracks in order to pave the road to what they can only hope can be.

And despite the best of intentions from both of those individuals, how the jittery journey to getting there can end in extreme pain, often for one at the expense of the other.

I'VE BEEN thinking of one person all week and how that person must feel, knowing the huge risk she had bravely taken -- with no guarantees, nothing other than a belief and a hope -- was not rewarded.

RISK AND REWARD.

It's such a cruel concept, but unfortunately it's the way of the world. If we don't take risks, there's no possibility of reward. But taking the risk can come back and bite us in the ass, and IN THE HEART.

FOR EVERYONE. Few of us escape either side of that equation.

The old saying is, "Where there's a WILL, there's a WAY." But WANT has to be there too. And WISH. And other wacko complicated variables that just have to WORK. It just has to WORK.

BOTH have to adhere to those first four W's for the fifth to happen, for it to WORK. It's extremely sad when it doesn't, and I have felt like a cad at times this week that it didn't.

BUT SOMETIMES, it just doesn't work. Sometimes, all the hopes and expectations and dreams and grandiose plans and loveliness and intense physical relations and great logic and commonality aren't enough.

Sometimes, it's just the way it is. It takes two. And it defies explanation, as much as we all want an explanation.

Sometimes, there just IS no explanation. That's the toughest thing to take...never really knowing why.

And wishing you did.

So you could tell that person how much you wish it had worked out...and that they are a wonderful person, even if it didn't.