On her 23rd birthday she was the saddest she ever anticipated she would be. She had had an altercation with her boyfriend whom she had been in a two-month-old relationship with about her not being ready to improve their intimacy from just kisses and cuddles to more intense sexual intimacy. The dilemma she was facing was that of a sudden change of heart he had after agreeing prior to the relationship that he would wait until she was ready. She never thought that this would be the position she would find herself in with the guy who had been the sweetest, kindest, patient and mostly genuine and who pursued her the most despite her hard-to-get tactics. The altercation happened a week before the date of her birthday was fast approaching and lasted more than it should have.

She woke up on the day barely rested as a result of tossing and turning, crying and saying silent prayers for the day to come to not be the proof she had prayed for to confirm otherwise about him being her knight in shining amour. She spent the night exploring every possible way to make them both happy, him satisfied and her not feeling as though she betrayed herself to make him happy. Daylight crept through the curtains, and she lifted her heavy body out of bed. With swollen eyes, a heavy head and an even heavier heart she walked to the small mirror on the side of her wardrobe and she saw her reflection, more than her reflection she saw her sadness and she sobbed at the sight.

She moved away and sat on the bed and forced a couple of breaths as she felt her chest tightening to calm herself down, tears were already welling up in her eyes. After a couple of breaths as though it was automated, she reached out for her phone and went straight to her text messages. Besides her mother having called her in the early hours of the day to wish her a happy birthday she had also sent her a text to further wish upon her a day full of blessings, she also found messages from all those who remembered, and they were comforting but there was one person who did not.

Having gathered enough strength to take a shower and to visit a coffee shop for a slice of chocolate cake and a latte with a friend, they visited a new town to explore the shops there. Besides sudden random aches of the spirit the day was getting better. They stumbled upon an old bookshop filled with old readers (old people), it was like walking into a little heaven that the two did not know where to start perusing. There were a lot of books, some signed by authors from three decades ago, others had travelled all over the world and previously been owned by different people. All of that brought a little sparkle in her.

She saw two books by Paulo Coelho titled Veronika Decides to Die and the other titled Like the Flowing River, an intimate collection of his reflections and short stories and she purchased both per the book owner’s persuasion. As the day was coming to an end she escaped to a world where she knew her mind would be flooded with new characters, new information, new points of views but what she most anticipated and hoped for was a solution to the issue she was faced with. She picked up Like the Flowing River and paged to a random short story after scanning the contents of the book. She stumbled upon a story that spoke about how certain tribes in Morocco perceived original sin. They say that as Eve was walking in the Garden of Eden when the serpent slithered over to her it persuaded her to eat from the tree that God had forbade both her and Adam to eat from and she refused but the serpent insisted. It told her that she needed to look more beautiful than she already did as there was a more beautiful woman that Adam had hid from her in a cave. When she did not believe it, it led her to the cave and told her to look into a well of water inside and reflected in the water Eve saw a beautiful woman. That is when she promptly ate the apple the serpent was tempting her with. Paulo Coelho closes the story by saying, “According to the Moroccan tribe, a return to paradise is guaranteed to anyone who recognizes his or her reflection in the water and feels no fear.”

Tears fell down her cheeks as she read and even more so when she finished. She took a deep breath to calm herself down and get back to her senses. She walked up to the mirror and admitted that she did not like who it reflected, the person in the mirror had lost touch with who she was and what her values were. She was willing to compromise her values and have her boundaries overstepped stepped just so she would not be lonely. She did not know what love was yet, but she knew that there was not any in the relationship she was in and most definitely not enough with the girl reflected to her. She knelt to give thanks to God for life and for the day and the wisdom that came with it. She lay her head down, still with a heavy heart but with a little bit more courage for the following day for it would bring with it the ending of one relationship and more effort into another one.