"life is the art of drawing... without an eraser"

these two quotes i chanced upon on separate occasions had me blown away

on pain:
“I don’t think pain goes away. I think we make room for it. With time, love, forgiveness, and healing, it eventually takes up less room. Not until then, are we able to fill up that space with a sense of peace and joy in our heart and soul.”  – Brigitte Nicole

i suppose Nicole meant the pain of failed relationships, but for me, it resonated so strongly on loss. a failed relationship is a subset of loss. loss not only comprises the emotional loss of relationships but also the physical loss as a result of death. the scar of losing someone, something dear, will never fade, it will always be there. someone once asked "does it [the pain] go away?". the answer is no. you just get on with life, make room for it. and as Nicole put it, over time, it takes up less room.  it disappears into the deep abyss of precious memories. and other emotions and memories take up that space, but it will still linger somewhere, somewhere deep in that far corner.

on relationships:
"Everyone you meet has a part to play in your story. And while some may take a chapter, others a paragraph, and most will be no more than scribbled notes in the margins, someday, you’ll meet someone who will become so integral to your life, you’ll put their name in the title."  – Beau Taplin

and this applies to all platonic relationships, although i suppose Taplin intended the last part for more romantic relationships. i previously likened it to woven threads:
" we are all threads in the lives of other people. some people are just more tightly bound and it's harder to unravel so sometimes it's easier to fix the frays by tying more knots to strengthen that friendship.
you start to become a stray end when you're out of the picture, even just for awhile. when unmended, you slowly become a fray that unravels without warning. it's tiring to keep finding stray ends. sometimes you just close an eye and pray hard it doesn't fray. and after a long while, your once tight bonds are brought to naught. your mass of thread that has unwound to nothingness then just slips away. while other threads are slowly weaving, weaving tighter bonds."

funny how i was so worried then about letting my memories and threads unravel.. because they did eventually tighten back up in the bigger picture. i think. i guess relationships in life are a never-ending piece of artwork, perhaps that's why a book works better, it's a piece inked with a typewriter on undestroyable paper, you can't backspace to delete, and you can't just shred your mistakes, you just have it typed on. you make your changes in black and white. and that's life.

c'est la vie.