Beautiful Memories At Heart

Prologue ~ Thinking Back

Hello everyone :) This is my first book, so I'm sorry if I'm not up to an author's standard haha xD This is pretty much a very unplanned story, that I only have a very simple, vague plot. I'm planning to make the story up along the way :D Please like or comment if you like it! ^_^

Enjoy! :DD

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I never once thought about how precious memories could be. I never knew that they could be so...magical, so...real, that it almost feels un-real. I've always thought they were merely flashbacks, like breathtaking greyed-out scenes you see from movies. Almost like a real, played-out imagination, except it actually happened. We practically lived in it. But I thought there was nothing much to look back to. 'Let bygones be bygones', they say. It's not that my memories weren't 'special' enough to look back to, I just didn't see the reason to do so.

People always say that memories are like the waves that hit the shore. They come and they go, but you can choose whether you want to go to the beach to see it happen. That is, if you allow yourself to witness them. But Mother told me something different. She advised me to treasure them and hold on to it like it connects to dear life. They shouldn't be forgotten, abandoned, or thrown away for any reason. She said that memories are the gateway to creating a better future for yourself as well as for others. If you can't accept your memories, you can't venture forward. But of course, it all seemed way too difficult a concept for me to handle at that time. I was too caught up in my own little naive and stubborn world to believe it. I couldn't fully understand why they meant so much, and what the consequences laid out. What twist of events would forgetting memories do anyway? Won't they just...vanish forever? Once it's gone, isn't that the end of them?

If only it were that simple. For a person like me, I learn things the hard way--only ever learning by truly experiencing it. Through pain and realisations that may have been too late to regret now. It was perhaps high time I swallowed my pride and listened to others, but it was much too big for that. I didn't have a care in the world.

If only I'd just accepted things as they were.

If only I'd been good for once if not more, by acting according to what was in store for me.

If only.

But it's all over. Whatever I think or say now isn't going to change anything that already happened in the past. All I can do now is savour the beauty of the present moment and lead on from there.

We tend to look at only happy memories and shut out the sad, tragic ones. It's a natural instinct and I can see why that is. No one likes to remember when their beloved grandfather left the world to a better place, or why their partners fell out of love and found another. It would only bring unnecessary pain, so it's best to just avoid them altogether. Why bring sorrow to yourself? The point is to run away from the problem, in hopes of never bumping into them ever again. There's no need to bring it up, and there's no reason to get to know it. I don't need a solution. I don't need consolation. It just needs to be left untouched.

Or so I thought.

I've only recently learned otherwise. I've come to know that there's more to tragedy than meets the eye. The focus should be on what we gained from that experience, not what we feel from it. We feel hurt. We feel agony. But what do we gain? Insight. Experience. Life. We can come to acknowledge it, learn from it, and embrace it. Welcome them with open arms. What follows is none other than empowerment and courage that kicks away all fear. It makes us stronger, and helps us see past the negatives. This was one of the biggest life lessons I'd learned.

Right this moment, I sit on my working desk, legs crossed, resting my chin on one hand and fiddling with a pen in another, as I gazed dreamily outside my window. The reflection looked back at me like a faded mirror, as if reminding me that I didn't look cut out for this job at all. I wore glasses that looked way too large for my face and pulled my long, hazelnut hair into a half-ponytail, its curls falling loosely behind my back. Ignoring all the telephone calls and shouts of fellow colleagues demanding reasons for not submitting reports on time in the background, I let myself sink into my memories. Memories that roamed like fireflies under the illumination of a vibrant moon...