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Author's Note: This is the memoir that is mentioned in "Helga's Favorite Flavor of Ice Cream" Please leave your thoughts, reviews, rants and reviews. Thank you so much :)

My Journey, My Discoveryby Helga Geraldine Pataki

I like to think that somewhere out there, on a planet exactly like ours,
two people exactly like you and me made totally different choices
and that, somewhere, we're still together.
That's enough for me.
–Iain Thomas, "The Twins"

We need, in love, to practice only this: letting each other go.
For holding on comes easily; we do not need to learn it.
–Rainer Maria Rilke, "Requiem For a Friend"

When you give someone your whole heart and he
doesn't want it, you cannot take it back.
It's gone forever.
–Sylvia Plath, quoted by Elizabeth Sigmund in "Sylvia in Devon: 1962,"
in Edward Butscher's Sylvia Plath: The Woman and the Work

The First Steps to Self-Discovery: The scariest thing I am about to do

I could talk about how when I was merely three years old I had found true love. A true love that was so epic it would quite literally shaped my entire childhood. A true love that would expand my creative, artistic soul and at the same time limit my horizon like a horse wearing blinders. A true love so profound that I can quite honestly describe the first eleven years in one word: football-shaped. A very odd way of describing a childhood as football-shaped and I'd presently agree. However I've never been much of anything but I was definitely odd.

I could talk about how true love existed in the form of a kind-hearted, compassionate young boy. This young three year old boy who had shown true, unadulterated altruism in a world of negligent parents, a perfectionist older sister, and one rather mean, lunch-stealing dog. However what would the fun be in talking about that alone?

I'm not here to be mushy and romantic. Don't get me wrong, I am very much a romantic deep, deep down. Underneath all the layers of my personality lives a romantic girl afraid of vulnerability. My heart yearns for romance but fears the complications of leaving my chest wide open for any surgeon to have their way. What better way to hide said vulnerability than by acting snarly, mean, rude and forever scowling at the world. Despite all of this that sweet little boy always seemed to easily break through and see glimpses of the real me.

The real me that wanted a great, sweeping masterpiece about love in all its depth, madness, passion, and complexity. I wanted to write and create great, sweeping love stories. I wanted to create my own Byronic heroes complete with mysterious castles, secrets held by the staff, and the one crazed woman who lived in a tower. The real me that wanted to believe in something more than what I had experienced throughout my life. I wanted to believe that love could conquer all, that love at first sight existed, that love was as if I had found the other half that would complement me and all of my faults the way I'd complement them.

That is the kind of love I want. I want the mushy, romantic kind of love because as Barbara Streisand said in "A Mirror Has Two Faces" it feels "fucking great." More than that I want a love that will sustain the good and bad times. I want a love that will be so strong and enduring that it's this love that sustains me when we're going through a rough patch, or dealing with a crisis. I want the kind of love where I love the person when they're eating breakfast, saying hello or goodnight, when we're grocery shopping, that whatever we do is a sign of love. I don't want flowers, and declarations of love. I want to be the Annie that finds my Danny. Every time I watch that Story Corps video about this amazing couple I realize that it exists, it truly exists, and damn it all if I don't get it.

The love I had witnessed in my life was filth, corrupted, damaged and destructive. The love I had experienced personally was selfish, mean, angry, and neglectful. Growing up I'd walk to school or take the bus and wonder if my family had ever truly loved me. I'd have so many thoughts, that no child ought to be burdened with, growing up.

I wondered if I had been an accident, the "oops" pregnancy. I long concluded that I had to have been given the disparaging age difference between my sister and me. As I bloomed into adolescence my father only grew meaner and would often tell me that I was unplanned and an unwanted pregnancy. I wondered if Miriam had issues against abortions and the fact that I am writing this introduction is testament to this fact. I wonder what could have resulted in Miriam giving birth to me when my parents held such anathema towards each other even from when I was a young toddler. The fact I had the signature "Pataki look" consisting of a unibrow, which I've long since waxed and shaped, means I am my father's daughter even if he wishes otherwise.

I know what I want and I know that I will refuse to settle. I've seen what settling does. My mother settled and had her spirit literally strangled until the only spirit she had left came out of a bottle. I know that for some settling in love may be fine or satisfying, but sometimes it is unsatisfying, sometimes it is depressing and sometimes it can be destructive. I cannot and will not take the risk of my very livelihood and spirit and if it means never finding the one then I know that I never once gave up.

The purpose of my book is to put it all out there. I need to put every last breath, emotion, event, everything out into the universe. I need to lay bare the very soul that beats deep within buried by pain, shame and embarrassment. I may be a seventeen year old scant in the experiences of love, life, and the world around me. However I want to believe that ripping off the bandages of this splintered heart will allow me to mend and move on. These fissures have cracked throughout my whole self and caused an ache that has only dulled in time but is always there. I want to heal, mend and not have this constant ache in my heart.

I want to believe that there is some gleam of wisdom I can dig out of the history of my very short, but interesting and unrequited, love life. Love isn't always rainbows and glitter. Love isn't always cheerful. Love isn't always like some Hallmark card. Love can sometimes grow ugly. Sometimes love can be at its birth, its inception, its first spark of existence be true and pure but warp as it ages. Love can be warped, corrupted, made deviant if it is ill-nurtured. I know this because my love of that football-shaped boy had become warped over the course of my childhood.

My book is going to brutally tear me open. I am going to lay at everyone's feet the story of my life and the truth of my secrets. I may never recover from this experience. What I do know for certainty is that I will not recover if I keep all of this deep inside me. Gnawing from the inside out like carrion-beetles laying waste to a carcass until there is nothing left but bones. Writing this book may have the same result but I know that, as cliché as the saying goes, what does not kill me will make me stronger.

This will not be an easy process for me. I have always been taught to keep my emotions close and shut off from others. I had the "Pataki pride" to uphold. I have done and acted in ways that have hurt others who have hurt me and angered me. Most shamefully I have hurt those I loved most, those who I would give my life to, like my best friend.
The fact that my best friend Phoebe has thus far been so patient with me, so caring, so long suffering but still willing to stand up to me is such a blessing. More than I think she realizes. Something I hope she knows, and if not, something I must remedy immediately.

I was more than a bully. I was a girl who acted self-defensively to protect myself. In protecting myself I caused a lot of pain from my harsh words to my nicknamed clenched fists. I directed much of this bullying to the "love of my life." I would often distance myself from the few that cared for me.

Then there is simply the fact that I am utterly embarrassed about how I behaved in the secret expression of my love. This is the area that I am going to openly discuss. I have kept this part of me secret for too long. It's festered like an open wound seeping its pus into my soul and heart, making it difficult for me to find peace, move on, and love another. I have allowed this to warp myself and to take over my life. It's been the millstone around my neck. It's been long enough, I must cut the rope and set myself free.

I'm going to steal back my heart.

I can't steal his heart
but I can steal back mine
I can steal back mine
I can steal back mine
I can't steal his heart
but I can steal back mine
–Emily and the Woods – "Steal His Heart"