The moment I first fell in love, there was an exhilaration, a flooding of emotions I never will forget.  A  space in time I hoped would endure forever.

          These feelings were like none other.  Experience  them once, and a second time the emotions                             are unmistakable.

I envy those who are so fortunate that once in love      their feelings grow and mature.  The exuberance changing only to that of a deeper and everlasting love.

To find my love was being cast aside so callously.  With no consideration to the consequences and affect it would                                  have on me.

     Years of dedicated love were abandoned and lost.       Leaving a heart broken, trust abused, and                  destructive searching for guilt that was not mine.

  Many years of looking at the relationship, wondering    what had gone wrong? Where I had failed? What I                  should have done differently?

Several more before coming to the realization that it had been for the best.  That the erosion of my heart had not               taken place in one fatal instance.

    Rather the years of reflection showed the pattern of destruction.  The increasing changes to my love, how it                 was tested and tried to its limits.

Like a rose my heart has changed.  It bloomed radiantly and then began to change a whiter shade as it faded and                 paled  from neglect and abuse.

  I looked at a rosebush this spring and thought it was     dead.  Nothing but the twigs of what had been a                 gorgeous rosebush the year before.

Memories of the flowers it produced, I left it far longer    than I should have.  More from lack of motivation to           pull the roots I knew would be deep.

   Then summer days came along, and occasionally I      would look for life, some sign that there was still a                      chance it might still survive.

Finally the first shoots of leaves,  far later than the rest   of the rosebushes.  Noting it was alive and ignoring it,                    expecting nothing from it.

    One day I walked out the door and glanced in it's       direction and there was one single perfect rose.         While still all the others bushes had yet to bloom.

One rose that came back to reaffirm in my mind that a    broken heart can heal.  Bloom again and be radiant             and beautiful and once more love again.

                            Cheryl C. Helynck

                                     1998