Boring.  Untasteful.  Uninteresting.  That’s how this world seemed to Xenia.  Her mom left early every day in the morning for work and came home late, smelling of booze and a mix of men’s cologne.  Her dad left on the day of her 9th birthday; he disappeared after the party promising to come back in the morning but never returned.  Xenia asked her mommy when he was coming back and she said, “He never will. He didn't love us to begin with.”  She would bow her small head and believe these poisonous words her mom spoke.  Hurtful words of this sort soon became all she knew.  

As she grew older and started going to junior high and next high school she grew farther away from her mother and from herself.  Her heart, once so alive and warm, began to colden and grow darker each day.  She looked into the world and saw no meaning or love in anything.  She rarely spoke because her mind was always racing with morbid thoughts.  No one cares about me, I might as well pretend I don’t exist because my life doesn’t matter.  There was no distinction between days, everything muddled together in a lonely, depressing mush.  With her mother wasting her life away with men, she had no one to teach her the truth and beauty of life.  She got stuck under the spell of Death that exists in life.  

    Every day she would trudge to school, staring at the pavement as her black Converse stepped monotonously one in front of the other.  She never lifted her deep honey eyes to see the glittering blue sky or the luscious green grass.  Even to her those magical things seemed black and gray, devoid of life because she herself was not alive.  School was a blur of chaotic noise and a view of her peers shuffling feet as they scuttled through the hallway.   She never listened to her teachers instruction, dozing off instead because the only place she wanted to be in was her dreams.  A place where she could escape the reality she felt she didn't belong in. 

Xenia’s melancholy outlook on life continued for years, up until her final year of high school.  It was an ordinary Tuesday afternoon and she was shopping for groceries for herself because her mom rarely came home anymore.  On her way out she noticed an older woman dressed in white cargo pants and a colorful flowy shirt, she felt drawn to her presence which is something she had never felt.  The woman radiated love and light and Xenia felt this love for the first time in her life.  Awestruck, she approached the lady and introduced herself.

“How do you emit this much love? Is it really possible to be as content with yourself as you are?,” Xenia inquired.  Her eyes were open wide in hopes of receiving a valuable, nurturing conversation.  

The woman smiled warmly, wrinkles forming around her beautifully aging hazel eyes.  “Well, I allow myself to be free.  To feel love, to feel pain, to feel sadness and happiness wholly and completely as I need to.  I let my heart do as it wishes just as I would when I was a little girl playing in the yard with dandelions with not a care in the world.”  She waved her hands around with grace as she spoke, her wrists and fingers adorned in silver and gold jewelry.  

“Never doubt yourself.  Open your heart, your possibilities are limitless when you have love,” the woman said as she removed a silver chunky heart shaped ring from her finger.  She opened Xenia’s hand and placed it inside. “This will remind you that if you give love to yourself then you can live in harmony with the rest of the world.”

She smiled deeply and waltzed away.  Xenia stood there holding the ring and a bit of her heart began to unthaw.  For her this was the end of an era and the beginning of a new mind and eye opening journey.