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    Monika Basile

    Monika Basile

  • It's Only a Masquerade

    Because at the end of it all, it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks or says. It only matters what you do. If you shout out big words of "someday" and do nothing, you haven't gotten anywhere at all. You are musing aloud and ruminating but are you brave enough to actually work towards the immense uncertain future of someday? Are you actively seeking your life and living in this wonderful world feeling the experience? Or are you merely dreaming?

  • Being Me

    There has been a huge blessing growing up in a large Italian family. Though everyone is constantly involved in everyone's business, and we overreact to all of each other's business, there is a blessing in knowing that those we are dear to, make sure we are aware at all times that we are their business.

  • Stay Golden

    I have spent too much of my life apologizing for being who I am. I have said, "I'm sorry but I feel…I'm sorry but I think…" and so on and so on. I have offered words of excuse for being a bit eccentric in my living, for being too emotional, for having outrageous ways of thinking and thinking outrageous thoughts, for being a "marshmallow" around those who might take advantage and for having the audacity to make some really stupid choices.

  • Deciding to Decide

    A while back a man told me he loved me. I was a bit surprised because it is usually me who gets so caught up. I whispered softly, "Do you really?" My heart heaving huge thuds, hoping against hope that it was not an accidental slip of the tongue. "Because I love you too."

  • Shining Alone

    I am on the verge of realizing a dream. Just right there-teetering on a precarious edge, so close I can just about touch it. I have worked towards this for more years than I care to count. I have dreamed this dream so vividly I can smell it and taste it and feel how it will feel. I just never pictured myself celebrating the victory alone. I never realized how important it would be to have someone special to share it with. Maybe that is because I never expected to be without that someone special at this time in my life.

  • Growing Roots

    When I was younger, I never understood what "outgrowing" someone meant. I didn't understand how that could happen at all. How did you suddenly not grow at the same rate? How did you decide that you were beyond who you had always held close to you? How did this happen?

  • Everything to Fear

    It wasn't easy to end a twenty year marriage. I had spent all of my adult life married to a man whom I loved very much. To end it, to turn away from what I had cherished a half lifetime, was a devastating and frightening act. It also was necessary for me to have the chance to have a truly love filled relationship.

  • Nothing but the Real Thing

    Tonight I am going on a real date. This is the first in a bit of a short while. Not just a meeting, a first meeting but an actual, let's have dinner and conversation and get to know you date. I'm excited about it.

  • 'tis a Gift..

    There are many ways to love someone. We can love them in gigantic dramatic demonstrations and we can love them in what some would deem inconsequential little ways and sometimes in the way that lay in between the two. Each is good and worth it and needed.

  • Love Ain't a Bad Thing

    "What is it that you are lacking in yourself that is keeping you single?"

  • Missing Pieces

    It is the final hurrah, the ending of a dream and the firm knowledge that what we wished for will never be. When the song has ended the dancers part and go their separate ways.

  • When I was a Mermaid

    I was eight and he was ten. It was summer vacation on a yearly trip my family took to a resort in Indiana about an hour and a half away from our home outside of Chicago. It was a highly anticipated event for my brother and I. We saved our money all year for it to buy souvenirs and to play the games of chance on the boardwalk. He was my brother's vacation friend. I was the third wheel always with the two boys. I am sure I cramped their style and I am sure too, it bothered my brother to have his little sister batting cow eyes at his summer friend. ...

  • Colors of Love

    I know someday when I have grandchildren, they will say, "What do you mean it was against the law?" They will say that about gay marriage. And I will be happy to have seen it come to pass. I know too, there will be those who will hate it even a hundred years from now just as some still hate interracial marriages, or marriages that cross faiths, or marriages that interconnect classes of different people. There will always be hatred. However, hatred does not stop love. I am thankful for that. ...

  • Un-Private Parts

    There seems to be a rash of unusual yet common events occurring in my life. They are strung together with a theme-a theme of disgust on my part. I am wondering if something has possessed certain men, taken a hold of them, if it is somehow beyond their control or if it is something about me that brings it on. The men tend to throw an accusation my way consistently and believe it to be me-that there is something inherently wrong with my reaction. This may be so...but I doubt it. I have been getting an awful lot of "junk" mail and "junk" texts. ...

  • Fly Away

    I am sure there is no true, all encompassing definition of love. I believe there are many skewed ones, self righteous ones and even bizarre ways to define an indescribable feeling. The trick of it is to find someone's twisted view of it or wonderful view of it to be in tune with your own. I think this is where the magic may lie. I think this is also where the heartache and the confusion begins too.If we don't agree on or at least somewhat agree on what love means to us personally, then we will never have what we seek and we will not feel loved enough to fulfill us. ...

  • Red Shoes

    This is just a small part of the story. The beginning part. It is one I never told and least of all to the person it is about though I have promised to do so some day. Awhile back, I had been discouraged about my ability to pick anyone who might be good for me. I seemed to get sucked into the most unlikely of relationships and wind up confused and feeling like a fool, or shocked and feeling that I must just somehow be an idiot in the grand scheme of the universe's workings. So, I asked God for specifics. I said, "Put a red bow on him. I seem to choose so poorly. ...

  • A Heart to Be Broken

    There are so many things to be afraid of in this world. Love is not one of them. Being in love, falling out of love, staying in love, loving to the tips of your toes and into the pits of the stomach and even the loss of love should not be something to be feared. Yet, there are so many of us who live inside this fear that we fail to live inside the reality of loving someone deeply. So instead, we do without. We don't dare give one hundred percent of our heart with the fear it will not be returned or it will be taken from us. ...

  • Monsters Are People Too

    In memory of my dear Uncle Pete who passed away in the wee hours of this morning.My father instilled a great love of monster movies in me. Most Saturdays and Sundays of my childhood were filled with marathons of the Creature Feature or The Monster Matinee. My Dad, my brother, my uncles and my cousins would settle down for the long haul of it most weekends. ...

  • Enough of the Fairy Tale

    "Isn't there more?" I have difficulty when someone says this to me. I have heard so many women complain of all they have in a relationship as they still long for the elusive "more". I am confused as to what it actually is and how each of these who have said this to me cannot describe or explain what it is they are still seeking. There is no perfection. There is nothing really close to it. There is goodness, and sweetness, tragedy and heartache mixed in with it. ...

  • The Opposite of Love is Indifference

    The age of indifference has nothing to do with numbers. It has to do with mindset and what we grow accustomed to, what we allow, what we accept and what we have given up on. I have found this does not conform to an actual timeline or years lived in the world. This has more to do with not caring and not even caring that you're flitting through life unconcerned.