I’m daydreaming again. There’s just something about this place that makes dreaming so easy.

29 08 2011

I can see it now, babe, our life together.

Like the first morning I wake up with you. There will be that odd feeling at first, you know: disorientation. Something’s different, I think to myself behind closed eyes, still sleepy but puzzled. Then it dawns on me.

“Oh my God,” I gasp out loud. ”I’m married.”

Wide awake now, I turn my head to find you beside me, smiling. You’re trying not to laugh, I can tell.

“Good morning,” you whisper, in that voice that I’ve had the biggest crush on from the start.

“I’m your wife,” I inform you, like this is news somehow.

You give up on holding the chuckles back.

“Yes,” you laugh, pulling me close. “And I’m your husband.”

That vital piece of information gets lost in the pleasure of snuggling deeper into your arms. My favorite place in the world, sweetly familiar on this life-changing day.

“It feels strange,” I admit to your chest, the only part of you that I can see. You’re holding me so tightly I couldn’t look up, but I don’t want any space between us. Not even the tiniest bit.

“Being married?”

“Yeah,” I sigh, but the feeling is wearing off as I focus on the beat of your heart. Another familiar thing.

“Bad strange?” you ask, ready to reassure me. You’ve always done that, calmed me down when I over think myself into a panic. You’ve talked down my walls until the only thing keeping me safe is the certainty that you will never, never, never take your love away.

I consider all of that, as well as your question, and I realize that there’s nothing to over think. This is you. This is us. We get to keep each other forever. And on the heels of that thought comes a great big booming burst of joy inside my chest. Fireworks, babe. Cheers and confetti and a big brass band. The biggest smile of my life growing inside my heart. I’m married. To you.

“No,” I say, wanting to jump up and bounce on the bed, except I don’t really want to leave your arms. “Wonderful strange. The bestest and happiest kind.” Can you feel my smile against your skin?

And then you turn my face up, and you see it for yourself, all the happiness in my eyes. It has to show — I don’t think my body can keep that much joy a secret. I don’t  mind. I want you to know all the deepest things written in my soul. I love you. I choose you. I choose you over fear, over self-protection, over doubt. I choose you for the rest of my life, for always. Completely. Irrevocably. No one else.

When you kiss me, I can feel those same words in every touch of your lips. All the words you’ve said over and over, even long before I was brave enough to say them back. I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you. Never stop believing that I do.

As I start to lose myself, I realize one thing. Every morning, from this day forward, will begin like this. And suddenly, that doesn’t feel strange anymore. It feels right. It’s the rightest thing in the world, waking up beside you. It’s the only way I want to wake up for the rest of my life.

Until someday, my love.

Wait for me as I wait for you.


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Categories : For you, Future Mr. Right, Love, The Cuyo Detour

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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And here I thought I was the only one who wrote letters to the future

25 02 2011

So there’s this guy. He has a blog. He writes to his future wife.

Even though I’ve written to my future husband several times, I didn’t think guys were into that, too.

He says things like, “I want to hear how you say my name… in various instances. I want to be able to tell that it is your favourite thing to say. And that it spills out over your lovely lips so damn naturally because you’ve been annoying your friends by saying it to them all the time.”

And  “I’d like to have kids. You know, with you. I can almost see already how it will unfold. I think our first baby will be a boy. And I’ll hope, with every ounce of my being, that when he finds someone to spend his life with, he’ll be half as lucky as I’ve been.”

I stayed awake the whole night reading. And afterwards, I still couldn’t sleep, because his words had peeled the protective crust off my heart, and all my deepest, most honest longings lay throbbing and naked on the surface.

I want to be loved like that. I want someone who will write letters on paper, and stage a sock puppet show when I’m sick, and promise me cupcakes for breakfast to get me to fall asleep at night. I want to share root beer popsicles, and cuddle in bed, and kiss while making dinner. I want to be cherished, not just needed.

And I need to love someone like that. Someone who will receive all the tenderness I have to offer and never stop seeing it as a gift. Someone who will let me give myself and find joy in the giving, because I’m not afraid that anything will be taken for granted.

Someone who will never make me feel invisible. Someone who will never let me go.

Just thinking about it makes me giddy.

Just thinking about it makes me terrified.

Because, who am I kidding, it’s one thing to write letters to the perfect girl, and it’s a completely different thing to meet…me.

I used to think waiting for the right man to come along was difficult. Now I know it’s gotta be harder when he finally comes. Because then I — the messy, complicated reality of me — would have to stand up to this man who’s been dreaming of his ideal girl all his life and say, “Hi. It’s me that you’ve been looking for.”

And, for all my imagination, I haven’t yet figured out what he will say to that.


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Categories : For you, Future Mr. Right, Love, Singleness, Swirl of Thoughts

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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Categories : 100 Words, Flash Fiction, Love, Writing Prompts

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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Categories : Love, Sunday Scribblings, Swirl of Thoughts, Writer's Island

The day after the first “I love you”

10 11 2010

Vanessa. Vanessa. Her name was pure pleasure on his tongue, impossible to say without an exultant smile. Smooth as the silk of her skin, sweet as the scent of jasmine in her hair, soft as the sensuous touch of her hand. His every prayer answered. Nessa.

He worried that he’d suddenly wake up and find that it wasn’t real. That she didn’t really smile at him with his kiss lingering on her lips, that the tenderness in her eyes was merely a trick of the light. His Vanessa. How was it even possible that those words together can be true?

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

 

 


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Categories : 100 Words, Flash Fiction, Love, This is fiction, ok? FICTION.

The one left behind

4 11 2010

She watched him preparing to leave, ruthlessly choking back the anguished doubt within her. He was busy, that’s all, she told herself, that’s why he never lingered. She knew he wanted to. She knew he loved her. She must know that. Didn’t she?

Tears flooded her throat. No. He mustn’t notice. Forcing the harsh despair from her voice, she murmured, I’ll miss you. He smiled distractedly, checking his watch, already on his way out. Don’t suffocate him, she lectured herself. But she wished, oh dear God, how she wished it was just a little harder for him to walk away.

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


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Categories : 100 Words, Flash Fiction, Love, This is fiction, ok? FICTION.

By the sea

17 10 2010

I went out with a friend today. We went out and we sat by the ocean, and somehow the conversation turned to the first one who broke my heart. Suddenly, I found myself talking about you again, after long years of thinking of you too much, then trying to forget, and finally succeeding. I surprised myself with all the little things I remembered — the way your laugh always made me feel like laughing, too, the way your eyes lit up with that irresistible smile, the way our friends always introduced us as childhood sweethearts and I’d protest that we weren’t, while you were quite happy to pretend that I’ve had a crush on you since kindergarten. I haven’t thought about all these things for so long, never even noticed the moment when I grew out of the habit of keeping you in mind. But now, with the gates of memory unlocked, I found myself remembering your hands on a guitar, your hands that could coax the sweetest music from any instrument you touched, your hands that used to hold mine. I could almost feel the thrill of it all again — my hero worship, the slow transition from seeing you as my best friend’s big brother to someone I could fall in love with, the stunned wonder when I realized you felt the same. It was my first time, and it was better than all the stories said it would be.

That day, as I sat watching the waves and allowed the memories to flow out of me, as I sat reminiscing about all that we used to mean to each other, I realized that it didn’t hurt anymore. There wasn’t even the slightest tinge of sadness. The what-ifs and the might-have-beens no longer haunted me. I could think about you, and talk about you, without pain. I could look back at all the wonderful little details that made you who you were, and realize that there is someone else who knows you better now, and be happy for you. I could take pride in the decent, honorable man that I knew you to be, and even though it didn’t work out, at least I know it was worth a try. You were one of the good guys. Not the right one, not meant for me, but worthwhile. And it’s okay.

Getting over you, being able to put you firmly in the past and wish you well for the future, being able to talk about you with fondness — it frees me. Though my heart is broken now for another reason, perhaps I can hope that someday, after the healing passage of time, I will sit by the ocean again, and watch the waves,  and laugh.


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