Good morning and good day, you pretty, shiny fishes and creatures. This is the Pouting Trout. Feel the sun’s healing and know it is a new and better day. I just wanted to let you know I am out here. I am listening. I know what you’re going through, and I know it isn’t easy, same as I know answers aren’t as easy as saying the words. But what better place to start.

Koy Coi asks:

Hey, Pouting Trout, can you help me out? I’m in a bad way. My boyfriend broke up with me. Do you know what he said? He said, and I quote, “Babylove, darlin’, please, we both knew this day would come.” Can you believe that carp? Who goes through life expecting one day just to up and leave it all behind them? What shallow waters we’re living in. We’d been together sixteen seasons in the same small creek, a tributary—so I guess he always knew he had other options downstream. But still, I can’t believe it. How can I ever trust anyone again?

Dearest KC,

Allow me to start out by saying thank you for your question. It can be hard to put our hearts on display as you’ve just done—and harder, still, to go on enduring that dharma day in and day out. But, rest assured, all is not lost! Call it missing. What you imagine that salty carp has taken with him, stolen as it were, will be returned to you. But you must take it back. That’s the hard part. Anchors like these drag us down to unknown depths within ourselves where the tendency is to want to salvage from the wreckage rather than return to the light and start fresh. But that’s what we must do: seek the sun’s healing. Allow yourself to be buoyed back up to the surface where, every day, the miracle of a second chance is granted, and we make our own terms.