Missing you

The empty bar hangs over a cliff, and in between beer sips and a quiet talk with a couple of friends on a lazy Sunday afternoon, I watch the rain hug the window panes. It goes on like an endless string of silver, only to end a second later, eaten by the angry ocean below. The water drums are complemented by the sad melody of the wind attempting to make shortcuts through the cracks in the roof. A momentary thought of how beautiful this day is crosses my mind.

How are the States treating me, you ask during the long overdue skype chat weeks later. It's easy to get comfortable here and I don't like easy nor comfortable. I miss getting out of my safety zone every day, working to prove myself constantly and deserving the good things that come to me. Just say you miss me, you reply, throwing a few jokes into the mix. Of course I miss you. Every passing moment that is not occupied by my work or my books, or sometimes various petty things society sees as important, I think of you. That is what I want to say, what I mean to say with every fiber of me. But I throw a joke back at you and I don't show even a slightest sign of how much I care. My guards are up. I lose all courage around you. I am terrified of being hurt by you and you alone.

You hope to see me soon, you say during our goodbyes. I can't help but replay that phrase for some fifties time in my head. Do you really? Or are you simply being polite? I gather these crumbs of happiness you've been feeding me lately and I build a castle out of them, avoiding as much as breathing in its direction, afraid it will fall apart before I get the chance to strengthen the walls. I know I've ruined things before, more than once, but I am learning from my mistakes. I will see you in November. And I will prove to you that I deserve you...
so much more than I did two years ago.

Listening to Relax, Take it Easy by Mika

Lie to me

For a second there you gave me hope. You lifted me up, and for one brief flicker of a moment you made me believe again. And then you walked away, as cruel as ever. I fell so abruptly and hit the ground so hard, that my entire being shattered into a million little pieces, each one a reflection of your heart. Do you really love her? Please tell me that it's only a passing whim. Lie to me if you have to.

Image by luminous-luminance

Listening to: Into the Night by Benny Mardones

I can listen no longer in silence

“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago… I have loved none but you. Unjust I may have been, weak and resentful I have been, but never inconstant…For you alone, I think and plan. Have you not seen this?” – Captain Wentworth, Persuasion

It is as if nothing ever existed. There were you and me, and then there was emptiness all around. Emptiness can be scary, but if tolerated long enough it comforts, even satisfies. No blissful ups, no heartbreaking downs, no never-ending hopes nor crippling betrayal. As time goes by, you learn to live with yourself, you learn to rely on you and grow happy with your freedom. You think that you are so mature, your heart so strong now that nothing in the world can hurt you as it used to, and more importantly no one.

But one day there comes a storm. A lighting strike illuminates the world around you and you see the things as they are, naked of illusions you’ve created. The reality breaks through the walls of your beloved emptiness and erases the boundaries of your comfort zone, ripping the protective wire you spent so long wrapping around your heart. And there he is, standing in the rain in front of you, and he is the same, and you find yourself utterly unprepared, not strong at all, in fact the weakest thing in the entire world, and it’s as if the last two and a half years apart were never lived. It’s as if you never let him go, as if you never ruined your happiness and his. 

 

I felt my heart skip a few beats and my body shake profusely the minute I heard he was in the country. Memories started flooding my head and the more I remembered, the harder I cried. The room went dark for a second and I had to grab the nearest wall to maintain my balance. Not only have I felt every emotion possible, but I was utterly unprepared to feel so much and so suddenly, and worst of all, I had absolutely no hope of any of these feelings ever being mutual again. I knew he had every right to distance himself. I suspected he’d never forgive me and I have come to terms with losing him, or almost have. I thought I had all the strength in the world, but I had none. I thought I had no love left in me, but I had it all.
 

So I gathered a few bits of courage and wrote to him. I dropped only a couple of lines, asking about his trip, staying neutral in tone and struggling not to give away any signs of my pain. The rest of the day seemed like forever. I heard nothing. I cried more, I drank a bit and I cried again. The following morning I woke up to a note from him. There wasn’t much said, but he responded, and that fact alone made me grow wings and fly through the day. We exchanged a few more words and those words gave me more hope than is probably healthy. I am no Anne, he’ll never be my Captain Wentworth and real life rarely grants us with happy endings. But a girl can dream, can’t she?