'To be or not to be' is truly a question that eats people when they go through the period of their first infatuations in life and there are two sorts of reactions to this. Both equally dangerous as the other as one is the disbelief in the magic called love while the other leads to heartbreak because "things are seldom right at the start" was a saying that was true.

And among those two came a small unusual and rare mix that only a few people could slip into and that was where Astrid fell in.

Astrid Finlay was never one to believe, not without proof but then came Ryan Stelberg and he showed her stars, dreams and all the colours of the rainbow and more and oh, she finally did believe that they were meant to be because like her grandmama always told her - love came with sacrifice and a great reward and she would have given up everything for Ryan, and, for a moment, she believed that he would too. But the moment had passed and naive, foolish Astrid realized the truth behind the statement when they said that everything was temporary - even love - when he left her with more than tears to cry. She remembered her strong intuition at the start that relationships were temporary and now this had been tested and was found true and she understood that innocence had been in her all along. And so, gone were all the promises of being together always like snow on the beach; melted, wasted, lost.

But Astrid had never been one to give up either because if she was anything at all, she was adamant. And she wasn't going to let go without a fight. That had always been the way she was and if the universe thought that she was going to let something that had been so beautiful and important and precious to her go with such ease, then oh no, the universe had picked on the wrong girl because she. wasn't. giving. up. even. when. it. got. hard.

She called Ryan every day to the point that he got fed up, he screamed at her over the phone and blocked her number. Astrid, after that incident, only called in once a week from her other number but still dropped in a message every day to which she never had a response in any form but it was alright, she was learning to cope. It sure stung how a person someone could go from being someone you loved to someone you hate but it wasn't that much of a surprise to her because if Astrid was anything, she knew a lot about love. Theoretically. Maybe it was watching romcoms on the TV at an early age or maybe it was listening to her nanny - Claudia's - rants about love and life, but either way she knew a lot.

She, however, in no way blamed Ryan for anything for she had always known that things like relationships were not easy. She was sure dejected over the fact that he would not even have tried to make things work but she knew that everybody had their own reasons and long distance was never easy... even if it was just across the town.

She felt the sharpest pang when she could see other people going through long distances from different continents and still happily together. Her own parents were the perfect example, even if she had not seen her mum or her dad in over four and half months. And if she had to use another example of long-distance working out across continents, she had Claudia too. Adrian and Claudia were working out perfectly fine and they hadn't seen each other in almost over a year. He lived all the way in Italy and she was in the US with Astrid and Teresa Finlay.

She sighed in dejection most of the time when she noticed her messages being left on read and wondered why they could not have been like Claudia and Adrian or her parents or anyone else that had long-distance working out for them. They could meet each other every afternoon if they made an effort but Ryan had given a pathetic excuse of 'long-distance' and broken things up like it never mattered to him at all. And it really did sting. Maybe things weren't meant to be just as perfectly as she hoped they would be. And maybe this was the way she was going to learn that everything was temporary in the world.

But she was recovering. Slowly but surely. For instance, it had been almost over two months since she broke up and she could finally stop moping around all the time. Sure, any mention of Ryan broke her into tears, even the thought of him made her have an emotional breakdown but it was much better compared to earlier.

And though Peony or the other girls might have secretly called her 'pathetic' behind her back, she could barely care about it. Ryan meant the world to her. In fact, he had become the only thing that made sense to Astrid and that had to hurt big time.

Though given time - and a whole load of sense being shoved into her head by abuelita - it was getting easier. It was a bit after her birthday and the temperature outdoors had been getting cooler and cooler. Her wardrobe changed and turned into more greys and red compared to the soft blues and bright yellows of summer and she was seen wearing clothes that suited her more.

By November, she was much better.

Six months after the breakup, she was almost back to the normal state she once was before she met Ryan. Of course, things would never be the same and she would always miss him but she wasn't moping any longer. She smiled more often, went to parties and had fun like every other teenager. She laughed loudly and was kind to everyone.

Things were looking bright for her and for once, she knew that she would be okay someday.

And on the most unexpected of days, she got a phone call from the same guy who ghosted her and did not spare her a single glance.

And just like that, all the walls she had built up so high came crumbling down and she was a wreck once more.