David

10 08 2011

You know what I found this morning, in a long-unopened compartment of my wallet? It was a letter from you, dated several years and a lifetime ago. Tucked into the folds were three balayong blossoms, dry and fragile from being pressed for so long. You loved me then, I remember. You recorded these promises for posterity, so that I can read them over and over again and know what I meant to you. And then you changed your mind.

Dammit, David. How can I still be hurting over this now? People’s hearts get broken every day. People get left behind, and people move on. So why the heck am I here, plenty of time and plenty of adventures later, crying over sheets of paper that no longer hold anything real? It’s not like I spent my days wallowing in heartbreak. Eventually, I stopped missing you or even thinking about you. I loved, I laughed, I engaged. I did things that matter. I grew up a little every day, and I stopped wanting you back. You are no longer a part of my life — most of the time.

But some days just catch me off guard. It could be the little details, like the sight of my own palm, messy with squiggles and lines whenever I write with a ballpoint pen. I can almost hear your exasperated laugh,  almost see you trying to figure out why the ink that should have landed on paper ended up on my hand instead.  Or it could be the big things, David, the wounds received in the process of living.  Somehow, every goodbye is still an echo of yours, every person walking away steps in your footprints until they are out of sight. And suddenly there would be tears flooding my throat all over again. After all this freaking time.

So here I am today, writing on tear-soaked paper, thinking that’s enough. That’s more than enough. I want to love again like I loved you, in spite of risk, in spite of fear. Loving you taught me just how much I could give and how far I can go, and I don’t want to lose that. I want to offer myself again to someone, the right someone. You didn’t stay, David, but someone else will. Someone else deserves this misguided intensity of emotion that I wasted on you, long after you didn’t want it anymore.

I’ve always been the one who remembers. In a way, I’ve come to accept that, the inability to really forget what was once important. The memories will remind me to be careful, but I could stand to let go of the souvenirs. It’s been over for so long. This is the part, I think, where I stop letting it hurt.


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Categories : Love, Post A Week Challenge, Swirl of Thoughts, The Cuyo Detour

The other side of someday

9 05 2011

I want to watch the rain with you. I want to cuddle on the couch with a blanket, a cup of hot chocolate with marshmallows, and you. We’ll open the window a little bit so that the smell of rain can come in, but I won’t be cold. With your arms around me, I’ll be in the safest place I’ve ever been, surrounded by your strength. It’s the only home I’ll ever need.

I want to go camping on the beach, on an island that we can have to ourselves. We’ll put up a tent and wake up early enough to catch the sunrise, and run on sand untouched by any other feet. At night, we’ll light a fire and watch the stars and the fireflies, but it’ll be the hardest thing in the world to think of wishes. What more can I ask for? You’re more than I ever dreamed I could have.

I want to walk with you, too, to everywhere and nowhere in particular. City sidewalks, lamp-lit boulevards, and long-forgotten trails — we’ll explore them together. We’ll duck into old secondhand book stores, try new cafes, or have a picnic under the trees. But the best part of these adventures won’t be how far we went, but the steps we took closer to each other. I’ll never get tired of discovering the man who won my heart.

But mostly, I just want to be with you. To hear you promise your love and trust that you mean it. To confess how I need you and know that vulnerability is okay. To look at you and see you looking at me and know that you’re thinking: “Wow. We really get to spend our lives together.” I’ll be thinking it, too. Because after all the false starts, babe, after all the wrong turns that broke my heart… I still believe you’ll come. I still believe you’ll find me.


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Categories : For you, Future Mr. Right, Love

One thing you know is true

5 03 2011

A couple of weeks ago, I asked a simple question on reddit, Facebook, and Twitter: What’s the one true thing you know for sure? I wanted to take a peek into people’s minds and see the truths that have been culled from years of experiences that I may or may never have for myself.

From more than 400 fascinating answers, I picked a few samples ranging from the mundane to the profound, from the cynical to the optimistic, and from the serious to the comical. I may not agree with every single statement, but I enjoyed reading them all.

THE ART OF LIVING

  • I’m going to die. Until then, I’ve still got a chance to change things.  -Disobedientmuffin
  • Life isn’t fair, but sometimes it’s unfair in your favor. -slimjames
  • My life is not being directed by M. Night Shyamalan. -Syms
  • Life only goes downhill after college. -poignantfallacy
  • There is nothing in this world more valuable than your integrity. I’d much rather die poor but respected than rich and reviled. -ShillinTheVillain
  • Nobody’s got to do anything but die. -instntkrma
  • When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap. -CheshireGreen
  • My Baba told me this…probably the best advice I’ve ever been given: Be cool. -fruitloop

THE WORLD AS WE UNDERSTAND IT

  • That everything is temporary. No exceptions. -greengoddess
  • The world doesn’t owe you shit. -rugtoad
  • If there is one thing I have learned in more than 30 years now, it is this: There is no such thing as security. Never. -Julesberry
  • Everything is gonna be alright…Everything is gonna be alright -zmoney1213
  • At first, I was not sure of anything. Then I read Descartes and I was sure that I, at least, exist. Then I read Buddhism and modern neuroscience and I am again not sure of anything. -florinandrei
  • That Descartes was an idiot. -GNG
  • Any effectively generated theory capable of expressing elementary arithmetic cannot be both consistent and complete. In particular, for any consistent, effectively generated formal theory that proves certain basic arithmetic truths, there is an arithmetical statement that is true, but not provable in the theory. -cliffhanger407
  • That nothing can be known for sure. -Gnarwal (Are you sure about that? -pokemonduck)

PEOPLE AND RELATIONSHIPS

  • People don’t want to be changed. Only if they want it for themselves will it happen. -oettinger
  • I am definitely not getting laid tonight. -Nferno
  • She’ll never love me as much as I love her. -Mattythecheese
  • People are not as unique as they think. I’ve met the same person many times in my life and yet they were all different people. -protodon
  • It’s your baby. -Nacho216
  • Don’t marry crazy. -snuka
  • Most people do not change, though the things you know about them does. -Glen
  • Love and pain are one and the same. -hmmcclish
  • This night ends with me and you. -omnilynx

THIS, TOO, I KNOW FOR SURE.

  • If you ever have a small child, it will one day by accident hit you right in the balls at full force. -Buy_More_Stuff
  • I will never sleep with Giselle. I’m also pretty sure I’ll never win the Superbowl. So pretty much I know I’ll never be Tom Brady. -turkmenitron
  • Nobody likes the smell of dirty socks. Nobody. -overcat
  • Johnny Depp is definitely hot. -prinsesavanie
  • When in doubt, drink water. -iwasapolygon
  • The Lord of the Rings is the best movie  ever. -Cristy
  • The only thing I know for sure is that I really fucking love cupcakes. -peachbot

To celebrate this outpouring of knowledge, I copied and pasted almost 9000 words of wisdom into wordle, and according to the results, here are the most common words that people use to express the things they know for sure (click image to see bigger version):


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Every ounce of confidence I have

2 03 2011

I don’t know how to swim.

If you knew that I grew up on a tropical island, this would be even more surprising.

You see, I almost drowned when I was  a child, and the memory of it was seared into my brain: overwhelming panic, an acute, painful longing for air, a desperate reaching for anything that could save me. Even the rescue left me weak, as the adrenalin drained from my body. I never wanted to feel that way again.

So even though I loved the sea, I loved it in a safe way: peering into the tidal pools, wading in the shallows, looking for shells on the shore.  I stayed away from the depths.

Until that summer.

He took me there, to the island where he grew up. And despite my caution, I could feel myself being drawn closer to him. For the nth time, I wondered when I would stop being afraid of what I wanted.

The gorgeous beach in that sleepy little town reminded me of home. His childhood friends were there, too, enjoying the sugar-fine sand, the crashing waves, and a sky so blue you wouldn’t believe it. Tired from the beach games, I lay on the shore by the waterline, eyes closed, feeling the sunlight on my lids, letting the waves caress my body, letting my hand float a little bit closer to where his upturned palm waited. Closer.

The world moved around us.

Shouts of “Hey, you two!” and “Come on!” intruded upon the sleepy rhythm of the waves. We sat up to see the sky no longer blue, but an equally unbelievable shade of radiant orange.  The whole universe was a temptation to fall in love.

His friends were laughing and calling to us, beckoning as they made their way to the nearby cliff. It was their favorite jump-off point, he told me, with the water below just deep enough for the 20-foot dive. We hurried to catch up.

When we got there, we were greeted by the most stunning vista imaginable. A golden, glowing sun hung just above the horizon,  so extravagantly glorious that my heart literally skipped a beat. Seriously, the universe was out doing itself. The group’s high spirits kicked up a notch.

Kevin went first, inexplicably yelling “Happy birthday!” as he jumped. (His birthday was in December.)

Larissa was more graceful, her flawless dive silhouetted against the dazzling sun for one captivating moment.

Javier and Elena jumped together, holding hands and laughing, then sputtering as they splashed into the darkening water.

We were the only ones left. He stepped onto the edge, grinned, and said, “You have to do this, too.” Then he dived.

“What? No! Wait—” But I was talking to empty space. Gingerly, I stepped closer to the edge and looked down. They seemed impossibly far away, treading the waves.

“David, I can’t swim!” I called down, wondering if he’d forgotten.

“I’m right here,” he shouted back. “I’ll get you as soon as you hit the water.”

My heart was pounding too hard to reply to that. Swimming in deep water was one thing, falling into it from a height of twenty feet was an entirely different level of dread.

The others were also shouting encouragement, but his was the only voice that made it past the buzzing in my ears.

“Abby? Come on, before it gets dark. I don’t want you to miss this.”

“I can’t!” My knees had started shaking.  The shimmering edge of the sun touched its reflection in sea.

” You’re safe; I promise. Abby, I promise.”

I stood there, a breathtaking sunset before me, an incredible man waiting in the water below, and twenty feet of fear and empty air in between. A lifetime of cowardice suddenly seemed awfully exhausting.

I tried to call out a warning, but my throat was too tight. I simply jumped.

And fell.

And fell.

Just because he promised.

Before I knew it, I plunged into the water, nothing but the deep unknown under my feet. Then I was pulled into his arms.

“You’re okay,” he said. “You’re okay.” I will remember that smile for the rest of my life.

Sheer exhilaration made me laugh. “Let’s do it again!”

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The brilliant beyond brilliant writers at Indie Ink have come up with the Indie Ink Writing Challenge, which I’m joining for the first time. This week, the lovely Jen O. gave me my prompt: A moment of living dangerously.  Just a moment. As prompts go, it was perfect for making me write about something I never would have thought of myself. Thanks, Jen!


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Before and After

20 02 2011

I used to know the exact moment you walked into a room. I would feel you there, and I’d turn, and a sense of peacefulness would grow inside me, immediately, without exception. I could be hurting or afraid; it didn’t matter. Your presence meant that no matter what was wrong, there was still something right.

Now it’s all too easy to pretend you’re not there. To see a photograph and look at everyone but you. The longer I could look away, the more it meant that the obsession was over.

I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.

 

(This is a response to the 100 words challenge in Velvet Verbosity. The word for the week was “within”.)


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Eavesdropping

11 02 2011

The girl was Korean, long haired and beautiful, one of the foreign students in the university. He was an American, tall and lanky, with a backpack that bore the signs of wanderlust. The tricycle I was riding stopped outside the cafe, and they got in with me.

“These are the things you write about in a travel diary,” he said, gesturing to the inside of the cab attached to a motorcycle. “How it feels to ride something like this.”

“Do you have a travel diary?” she asked.

“No,” he answered, gazing at her. “But I think I’ll start one tonight.”

I kept my eyes on the passing scenery, pretending to be oblivious to their conversation. In the enforced intimacy of the vehicle, however, I couldn’t help but be drawn in. They didn’t seem to know each other very well, but they had unmistakable chemistry. He was falling for her, I realized, trying not to smile.

He stole a shot of her with his DSLR camera, making her laugh. She borrowed it and asked him to teach her so that she could take his picture, too. They bantered back and forth, and it was light and sweet and a little corny — perfect, in other words. The kind of conversation that you lie awake at night remembering until you fall asleep with a smile.

Listening to them discreetly, I thought, this is what I miss. I still shy away from the idea of passion – the grand, deep, complicated vulnerability of an intimate connection with someone. But the openness to possibilities, the willingness to be enchanted by another human being — I miss that. If only I could have the fascination without the fall…but I can’t. One always follows the other for me, so I choose distance. Distance is safe, while I wait for courage.

But when the tricycle stopped at the seaside boulevard, I watched as he helped her down and didn’t let go of her hand. The odds were against them ending up with a happily ever after, but it didn’t seem to matter. Tonight they would walk hand in hand by the seashore of a country not their own, and, for the moment, it was enough.

____________________________________________________________
True story written for the “beguiled” prompt from Writer’s Island and “story” from Sunday Scribblings.

 


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On love and persistence

12 01 2011

My 2010 ended with a wonderful reading experience, Sue Monk Kidd’s bestselling book The Secret Life of Bees. In the novel, a 14-year-old girl named Lily Owens tries to make peace with the mother who abandoned her…and whom she accidentally killed. In this lush, glowing, sensuous novel about the hearts of women and their search for a spiritual foundation, a particular line by August, one of the most memorable characters, struck me:

“That’s the only purpose grand enough for a human life. Not just to love — but to persist in love.”

And I thought, Exactly. How absolutely easy it is to come to love someone. How thrilling and how wonderful to open your heart to the adventure that is another person coming in. The delicious rush, the heady excitement, the beautiful sweetness of it all — people love the idea of love. There’s nothing quite like it.

But it’s the day-to-day realities in the “ever after” part that people seldom talk about. When you find out that the prince isn’t all that charming and the princess isn’t quite the fairest in the land. Or when you grow up and discover that your mother isn’t perfect and your father isn’t larger than life. Or when you realize that who you’ve become isn’t quite who you planned to be. In every kind of love there is a certain level of inevitable disillusionment. What happens after that?

That’s when persistence comes in. Every kind of lasting love that I’ve seen isn’t one passionate movie moment after another. It’s a commitment, a series of daily — sometimes difficult — decisions to love and to keep on loving. And to forgive. Forgiveness, possibly, is more important than anything else. I forgive you for forgetting that anniversary. I forgive you for not understanding the reason I got mad. I forgive you for what you said when we fought. I forgive you for being human.

Because really, where would we be without forgiveness?  Without the desperately needed grace that allows us to be imperfect? If love is given only to those who are easy to love for as long as they stay easy to love, we’d all be alone. The writer Anais Nin says:

“Love never dies a natural death. It dies because we don’t know how to replenish its source. It dies of blindness and errors and betrayals. It dies of illness and wounds; it dies of weariness, of witherings, of tarnishings.”

Persistence is the decision to keep love alive and to replenish the source. It’s the day-to-day effort to keep seeing someone as flawed as we are through the eyes of grace. Near the end of The Secret Life of Bees, this is what Lily Owens realizes about her mother when she learns to love her despite her abandonment:

“Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.”

I think, maybe, that’s how a part of growing up happens for all of us. When we start to let go of the picture-perfect fairy tale of love and start preparing ourselves for the work that it takes. And when we realize that, no matter what, it’s still worth it.

 


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A Small Step at Sunset

8 09 2010

She sat on the grass under the huge acacia tree, watching the sky change color from a clear blue to the glowing hues of sunset through the lacy patterns made by the branches and leaves. It had been a good day. She had gone out with her friend Jake, wandered around town with him for a bit, until they both ended up in this peaceful place where the traffic sounds faded away. It was just the two of them, the sunset, and their thoughts.

It was the first time he’d done this with anyone, Jake said — just sitting on the grass watching the sunlight fade into dusk. Smiling, she told him she’d never been to this spot before, either. She usually watched the sunset somewhere else, with — no. She would not think of him tonight. She would not ruin this moment with memories that were beautiful once but were tainted now, because he left.

Restless, she absent-mindedly picked at the grass, feeling the soothing coolness of their leaves against her fingers. She plucked and pulled until she found a particularly long blade. Automatically, her hands moved to start weaving a grass ring, like she always did with…. Sigh. The memories would not leave her alone tonight.

Helplessly, her mind flooded with images of the first time they watched a sunset together. The first time she made him a grass ring. The many times he promised he would never let her go. The last time she believed him. She took a deep breath, willing herself to shake off the painful questions that she knew might never be answered.

Jake looked at her in concern, but she just smiled and shook her head. He was a good friend, but she knew he had his own ghosts, too. They were both haunted. They  both needed to forget. She needed to let go of what she never thought she’d lose, and he needed to give up on what he knew he couldn’t have.  The difference was that he could talk about it, and she couldn’t. Not yet. Maybe someday. She looked forward  to someday.

In the fading light, she looked at the half-finished ring in her hands. She took another deep breath, preparing herself to break yet another link to him. Despite a sentimental hesitation, she knew there was no point in preserving what was no longer real. He was lost to her, permanently. It was time to make new memories. Slowly, she started weaving again, knowing this one was for Jake, but also for herself. She was letting herself let him go.


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Eventually…

31 08 2010

It might take a while. It might be harder than expected. But it will happen.

Eventually.


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A Different Ever-after

27 08 2010

It’s always been your favorite part of the fairytale — the happy ending. You waited for it in every book and hoped for your own version all your life. Then some time ago, you thought you found it, with him. And maybe to others he’s a pretty average guy, but you saw something different, something that made you believe he’s the one.  So you gave your heart.

But things went wrong, as they sometimes will. Life isn’t a storybook. And the one you thought was there to rescue you instead rode off into the sunset and left you behind. He’s gone. And just like that, it’s over.

Knowing that, you push yourself to let go, and to a certain degree you think you’ve succeeded. Yet there’s still that tempting fantasy, that dangerous hope — that somehow, after all these twists and turns, you can still be with him. You can still have your happy ending. So maybe you’re unaware of it, maybe you say otherwise, but deep inside, you’re still holding on.

However, there’s another kind of happy ending, one that doesn’t ask you to live your life always looking backwards. It’s when you finally learn that even without this person, you have a right to be okay. You have a right to make new memories to replace the ones tainted by disillusionment. You have a right to feel that your heart is whole again — not twisted with the pain that’s been your constant reality since he left. But you have to make a choice.

You have to choose that road, the one that leads to healing. You have to stop waiting on that spot where you were together for the last time, that spot where you hope he’ll return. Because that’s where he broke your heart, and no matter how difficult it is to accept that he’s not coming back, there’s no longer any reason for you to stay. It’s time to move on.

And once you do, it won’t be easy. It won’t be instant. Sometimes you might feel like you’re going nowhere. But take your time, and celebrate the little things. Maybe it’s something as simple as not noticing it’s his favorite song on the radio. Or perhaps it’s being able to go to a special place with someone else and not him. Or it could be the first time you hear his name without flinching inside. It starts with those little steps. And soon, after every hard-earned inch, you’ll look behind you and realize that you’re walking away from that place of heartbreak. Slowly, and not always without steps backward, little by little you’re moving on.

At the end of that road is something better than what you left behind. And once you get there, you’ll know that every step, every stumble, was worth it. And that journey that you took, all the way from brokenness to being whole again — that’s your story. And the best part of it is that it doesn’t have to end.

(written as requested by summerlight) :)


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