Home from another week in paradise. This year it was Christmas in Lanzarote. The time has gone too fast.. I could have stayed longer. I wish. How blissful life was for that one beautiful week.

On Christmas Day I managed to stay up past my bedtime (hah!) and gave in to the tantalizing prospect of winning a bottle of champagne singing Christmas karaoke. I did get my bottle (as did the other four contestants, though I think I would have won) and that will forever be known as the #gamechanger. That same night I made the acquaintance of three very charming Italian men from Milan. A bit too young for me, unfortunately, but they were quite fun. We stayed at the hotel bar drinking with them until closing time. Then, my friend and I decided it was time to pop the bottle down by the ocean. We beckoned to the boys to come, but in our haste we left without waiting. It was one of those twists of fate that ended up being for the better.

My friend and I found ourselves a spot along the promenade, on a bench overlooking a tiny inlet where the waves crashed upon the rocks. There we sat, emptying the bottle into our cheap plastic cups and staring off into the ocean, listening to the waves and the clinking of sailboats in the marina.

Many things were said. Thoughts and feelings confessed. Secrets exchanged. We laughed, we cried, we yelled into the thunder of the surf. We drank every time we moaned, "Why is it so hard?!"

The exact details of the conversation that night are hazy. That's what a bottle of bubbly shared between two will do to you. But the messages, the feelings, the realizations, still remain clear.

I had this revelation. Life is so short, that I already learned. But one thing I had yet to learn was to come to terms with my feelings for others, and to communicate to them. This has long been something I struggled with and has caused me much pain in the past. I had learned to live without regret, to make decisions that led me along a path where I would have minimal opportunity to wonder "What if?" Yet I have had difficulty being able to apply this to my romantic interests in the past, for the fear of being hurt or shamed by one not reciprocating those feelings. Thinking about the one back home, it suddenly overcame me how it is quite simply, just plain stupid to think that way. If you care for someone, why wouldn't you say it? For the fear of getting hurt? How hurt would you be if you kept those feelings to yourself, waiting and wishing for a moment to come along for that person to magically know what's on your mind and to act upon it? For the fear of embarrassment to put yourself at someone else's feat only for them to not reciprocate, to reject you? The alternative being... not saying anything and nothing happening, ever?

It does all sound sort of silly now, doesn't it?

With the bottle finished, we gave our last drops to the ocean, a libation for the universe, an offering in the hopes that "It might become a little less hard." We returned to our room and I had the unshakable confidence and conviction to pick up my phone and tell the one I had been thinking of how I felt.

"I'm not good at feelings and shit.
"But.
"You should know. I'm bat shit crazy about you. Really.
"And I was just thinking about like.. all the stupid shit that life has put me through, and is continuing to put me through, it's just stupid to not say something."

It doesn't matter what the outcome was. I didn't care. I didn't do it for any intention other than communicating the way I felt. No pressure, no expectations, no lovey dovey shit. Just.. putting it out there.. and letting the universe decide the rest. Very yogic of me, I have to say, and for that I am proud. In my 28 years of existence I have never done that before. It took strength, it took guts, it took something I didn't know I had.

That night, the earth shifted beneath the waves. And in that I mean, something deep within me, shifted. I don't know what it was, don't know what it will mean, but I know that that Christmas night--despite being brought on by drinking rhum-miel with Italian boys and a subsequent bottle of champagne-- was pivotal.