As we move through our lives, we come across people who affect us; people who help us grow, teach us lessons about ourselves and the world, and who may love us. These people, if we are lucky, will bring light and joy to our days and will stay with us long after we first encounter them. Sometimes, however, we are unlucky. Sometimes those who could have great impacts on us leave. Sometimes the time we meet them is not right, the situation we are in in our lives happens to be that we cannot embrace those who we desperately need and don't know it, or desperately want but cannot have. Fate works in mysterious ways.

I do not believe in love at first sight, but I do believe in instant chemistry. It happens that I meet people and decide that we will be friends; there's just something about how we laughed over the same thing in the cafeteria, the way I complimented their shirt, the way we happened to share a glance. In this way, I believe the same happens with people to love in a less platonic way. There are people we become drawn to, moths to a flame, people who we can't stop thinking about after first meeting. Think of that person you saw on the bus once who you accidentally made eye contact with and in an instant planned out your entire wedding; it's just like that. In the best instances the situation becomes a romantic comedy: your friends and family notice a change in your demeanor and how much happier you seem; you want to be with them all the time and talk near constantly. The other person is on your mind as you fall asleep, and you know that they feel the same way about you. You fall in love and dream about having a garden with tomatoes and vacationing in the Bahamas together and one day you will! Because your life is a movie and it's great.

In the worst instances, you have a boyfriend or they have a girlfriend or one of you has enough emotional baggage for a family of seven while the other is unequipped to help with that or you might be moving to Europe in a year or... The point is, life doesn't let you enjoy them. Maybe you see each other once or twice before realizing this, or maybe you actually have the chance dream about sailing around the world and have a garden full of what you'd need to make your own pasta sauce. Perhaps the latter is worse, because when you fall for that person you met it'll only hurt more when you realize whatever you have can't happen. They were the right person at the wrong time, and nothing you say or do can change how life just gets in the way.

The best thing we can do when the right person wanders in at the wrong time is to let them wander out as peacefully as we can. It can become too much to fight for something you both know won't work, be it friendship or a relationship. While it can be difficult, the best thing to do is breathe in, breathe out and try to accept what is happening in your life in that moment. People come in and out of our lives, sometimes when it's a good time, but sometimes when it's not. We have to take what we can from our experiences with them, not matter how brief. Breathe in, breathe out.