Do you remember what it was like to be a kid? Can you think back that far? Can you put yourself in that place? Imagine the feeling of holding a balloon as a child; how it felt real to you even though a part of you understood that it probably wasn't alive. It existed as a being for you and that was all that mattered. It was the faith that you had in its existence, in the tiny inkling that there was really something that could feel in that balloon, that made it worth something to you. And you would spend days with the balloon, drawing faces on it, running with it, maybe even talk to it and share things that you wouldn't tell anyone else because you felt that the balloon was a real friend to you and had no tricks to pull; Because inside you there was a belief that the balloon was listening and the balloon understood and that somehow the balloon loved you back even if it was just between the two of you, even if these were secret moments.

But a few days would go by and without warning the balloon would begin to deflate. It was happening every second you spent together but you paid no attention to it because to you, balloons never really died. So you made this promise that you would still love it, no matter what. But one week later your mother would come through your room to see this deflated balloon with maybe one bubble of air left and the faces you drew shrunken and smudged. She would tell you to get rid of the balloon, that it wasn't worth keeping anymore. And even though you knew, you would never be able to run with the balloon flying above you anymore and that its smiley face would just be a black splotch and not have the same pleasant air as it once did, it was still worth something to you. It mattered and was still just as important to you as when you first saw it flying high above you with that magical aura of invisible life that it evoked. So you'd let it stay, maybe even distract your mother from ever seeing it.

But a week later she would see it again. She would tell you that it was ridiculous to hang on to it, that it was dead and it was time to throw it away. And even though you knew that it had just become a relic of sorts, pathetically tied to some chair in your bedroom doing nothing but taking up three inches of ground and creating an eyesore, that it was no longer a playmate but just a dear memory you were holding on to for sentimental sake, it still breathed some sort of life in your mind, its blotched ink still smiled for you. And sometimes you thought that maybe you could blow some air into it and it would look a little more like itself again. But you wouldn't because you couldn't run the risk of completely deflating everything that it was, everything that it meant to you. So you left it alone.

Eventually your mother would throw it away while you were at school or at a friend's house and you would come home to find the balloon gone. And because you felt for it even then, you searched through every known trash can in the hope of finding it still there. But it would be gone. Forever. No balloon ever replaced another. Was that so foolish a thing to believe?

Now imagine the balloon as a person.

People give all kinds of advice. They tell you to let go of things because that would be the best thing to do. Because what you had with it didn't mean anything anyway. That it was worthless because it wasn't real. But regardless of the circumstances, of all the actions that speak louder than the words, regardless of the fact that nothing will ever be the same, in your heart you know it would be wrong. Never mind the fact that the walls collapsed around you and that everything in your head has told you how pathetic it is, in the end it was the company you enjoyed. In the end, it was worth something to you, no matter how solitary that feeling was. In the end, you always believed in it even if it tore you apart. That alone is worth more than all the "good" advice in the world. That alone is what makes people better. I believe in the good that there is in people. I always have.