He always wanted to fall in love.
How life would have changed or been different,
To be able to say one day, ‘If I had you’.
This is a story of falling in love…and out,
And other things, or something like that.
It all began on a ‘soft day’ in Ireland, but let me start at the beginning…

   There are times it may be just as bad to win as it is to lose. You can start with the simple act of
buying a lottery ticket. Then a bet on your favorite sports team or you ride with friends to a casino and
wager on a hunch or ‘tip’. You win and keep going. It feels good. You want to keep that feeling. You
win a little more. Then one day you put everything you have on a sure winner and it comes in last.
You’re busted. Lose it all.
     In the same manner, it’s not hard to find a person who believes that when you fall in love
once, it may be possible you can fall in love again. That’s not always the case. It’s like dealing
with Nature’s slot machine. At the start, when you’ve met a person you like, you bet a piece of
your heart. You win a little. You want to keep that feeling and invest a bigger piece of yourself.
Keep going. Get   in deeper and deeper, bet more and more. Then it ends. You lose. Payment due
but there’s nothing left. Can’t get back to where you began. You turn away from everyone and
everything. There’s a type of journal inside my head. Private. Memories and thoughts to myself.
You don’t let those things out. Certainly not around the company I kept. No one cares anyway.
     Everyone has problems. Circumstances change everyone.
     Life is a gamble.
     Oddly enough, my life began to change and sober up at a local bar. I got friendly with
Nick Sullivan, the night bartender. Good kid, mid twenties. Always seemed to talk about a
woman he met years ago and how hard it was to find someone. He owed money to a loan shark
in Boston, Massachusetts, his grandmother owed money to a loan shark in Dublin, Ireland and
there was a young woman named Molly, they both owed something too.
     The problem was as simple as that. The solution was not.