Counting Hours.

I find myself avoiding the radio like the plague when I’m driving. Mostly because the more tolerable songs on the airwaves today are predominantly written about love and love mostly reminds me about you.

I’ve always felt like such an idiot when it came to love. Or you know, affection, adoration, matters of the heart, whatever the romantics call it. And it’s all so much harder now because I don’t think I know who I am anymore. I don’t think I’ve ever had a clear handle of who I am truth be told. Not the way I did when I was with you anyway.

And now I’m left with nothing but what I remember of those late nights and stolen moments that I took care to ensure I have etched into the corners of my mind.

I know nothing now but the way you whispered my name, the way the words of gilded hopes and desires rolled off your tongue, the way the morning light danced upon your face, the way your crooked smile could have my breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat as I rush to memorize the moment and have them seared into the back of my eyelids.

A tilt of the head, a flick of the wrist, a furrow of the eyebrow, all burned into my mind, never to leave.

And it was a slow burn too. It wasn’t a wild fireball set ablaze by involuntary combustion, it didn’t burn bright and high until it faded into the stillness that swallows it but a kind of fiery, a kind of effervescent in all its breathlessness and I hated that I had to clear my throat to speak when you so much raised a glass to your lips.

It was slow and it was cautious and it was deliberate.

But then you were gone. Like smoke and ghost. Leaving me with images of crinkled sheets and half smoked cigarettes; winded and confused, trying to convalesce my heart from the jetlag  and untangle myself from lying awake in the mid of night mentally calculating the time differences.

No, a love song about distanced lovers could definitely not have hit a more inopportune a place than a heart broken by distance.

…

“What time is it where you are?
I miss you more than anything.”

Waldeinsamkeit.

“I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scarred her. She was the type to like things that are concrete, like the oceans. Something you could point to and know what it was. I think that’s why she always struggled with God. And I think that’s why she also struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it and make sure it never changed.”
Carrie Ryan

Not Everybody.

I check my hair, my face, smoothen out my clothes and walk out of the car. There was a nervous flutter in my walk. A thing I didn’t understand.

I see the unmistakable  grin from a mile away and it’s weird when I think how edgy I am. Because within minutes, whatever my unfounded fears or nerves were about, it proved to be exactly that. Groundless and for no reason.

Which completely goes against what we’ve been taught I mean it’s out of sight out of mind. Isn’t that how the saying goes?

Isn’t that how you forget how certain songs meant the world to you at 16?

Isn’t that how you can forgive someone whom you just hours ago wanted to punch in their irritating mofo face once you’re home and cooled down?

Isn’t that how you forget about the message you were meant to send yesterday when you saved it in drafts to send later?

Isn’t that how you get over someone when you break up? Not see them, not talk to them, not even think of them?

Out of sight, out of mind.

And so I walk down that road, flutters in my stomach, reminding myself things change and dynamics shift and understandings fade. But then you throw your arms around me, a tight embrace of old friends reuniting. And we talked. And talked. And talked.

And then I realize, sometimes, some things don’t change.

Sometimes you exit someone’s physical life for days, weeks, months or even years and it still feels like you only last saw them yesterday. And hello’s will always come as easily as it always has been.

…

“I am lonely, yet not everybody will do. I don’t know why, some people fill the gaps and others emphasize my loneliness.”
Anais Nin

2012, Please Be Worth It.

Here’s the mandatory ‘By Golly Gee Whiz, what a year it’s been!!’ post. And yes, this is me trying to be not so much of a pain in the ass despairing realist by spewing hopeful words of wainbows and butterflies, jumping onto the whole ‘new year, new start’ bandwagon.

So, where to start. From the beginning then. 2011. What can I say? 2011 has been a year of change for me. But then again, every year has been a year of change for me. And I find myself being such a fool who can barely keep up. Such a stumbling, bumbling idiot, tripping over her own feet. And it’s just so difficult because everyday I yearn to find myself amidst the rubble because I don’t know what I am anymore.

Last year, like a certain song that touched me so much, I vowed to get up and go. I vowed to move on. I vowed to let things go and not spend my whole life holding on. Clearly, yet again at the end of the year, I am not the person I promised I would be at the beginning year.

Letting go isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. Having the courage to ensure I can pick myself up and move on is not what I envisioned it to be like. Not even a little. Not even at all. And so, I relapsed into many a thing that I vowed to let go and move on from, because you’re never as strong as you would have yourself believe. I’ve learned that the hard way.

But I digress. I kind of do that a lot. Back to it, where was I? Right. 2011.

2011 has been such a tidal wave of change for me, yet again. It has been a year of many firsts, many revelations, many adventures, many hurts and many pains. But what is life without them, right? And for 2012, I hope that the changes that roll around surely as they will, will be worth it.

I hope that I will hurt more (but not too much pleasekthanks) and grow stronger from them even more. That I will keep dreaming hard enough and persevere for the dreams to exist in my waking world. That I will be patient and make mistakes and be able to admit them and learn from them and move on better than I have this year. That I will breathe, and love, and live.

And most of all, I hope that for you too, you reading this. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, however you’re hurting, whomever you may be missing.

…

“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep… that have taken hold.” 
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King

Of Life, Love, Regrets and Moments Lived.

“If you died tomorrow; could you honestly say that you lived the life you wanted?”

Oh yes, the joys of tumblr-ing, apart from over the top fangirling and insane couples shipping, once in a while it throws things like that at you.

And let me just say that after one or two of the best coffees you’ve had in a while, you see something like that and it’ll keep you up all night thinking about life, love, regrets and moments lived.

The thoughts swept me into Yuletide. And since it’s not the gift, but the thought that counts; have a strong cuppa this holiday season, and ho ho hopefully this holiday, wherever you are, whomever you’re missing, whatever you’re doing, you’ll think about your life and enjoy it the best you can.

…

“We should all start to live before we get too old. Fear is stupid. So are regrets.”
Marilyn Monroe

This Time Around.

Tea (Of the iced and Starbucks variety), Good Company and Presents. What better way to spend your 21st?

I think I’ve finally come to terms that I will never love that time of year where I am reminded how alone we all go through life, I mean, we’re born alone, we live in our skin, not knowing any other vantage points of our own and we die, absolutely alone, but I digress.

I guess I just spent most birthdays bitter, angry or sad. And it’s become this thing that I associate with being utterly alone. But this year, no plans actually made things lovely.

…

“I don’t think I remember, A taste as sweet as this December.”

Protected: Misdirection.

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Protected: Kidding Me, You Have Got To Be.

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Distractions, Distractions.

“Because I come here, in the middle of the night, in my pyjamas and you haven’t even tried to kiss me. Not once. If you really meant that, I’d be slapping your hands away from me,”

“Or maybe, just hear me out here,” he made a gesture to quiet her as she opened her mouth to protest, “Maybe I’ve come to realize that you’re not someone who’s going to stand any of my crap, and that I’m crazy enough about you to get my shit together and be mature enough to exercise extreme and incredible amounts of self control to respect you instead of just chasing after cheap thrills,”

The moment was painfully perfect. Rife, teeming, and an echoing reminder of all the reasons they would never work. But that’s exactly what it needed to be. Maybe for a while, and maybe for always. But they love each other. And it was obvious to everyone but them.

She breaks away from his gaze and becomes particularly interested in her fingers, playing with them absentmindedly.

And he just can’t. He can’t touch her, can’t flirt with her, can’t tease her the way he used to. Because she’s off limits now. He cannot have her. He cannot even want to have her. Because it would be so wrong. For so many reasons.

“So how fare me in the art of cheering the lady up?” he breaks the silence.

“You’re doing okay,” she shrugs.

“If I were, you’d be happier by now,”

She looks up at him with a genuine smile.

“I am happy,”

And she really is. She may not be okay, but she’s happy. And it’s beautiful moment because he makes her smile. Easily. And everything seems a little bit okay even if it’s not. He takes the weight off her shoulders and she finds it easier to breathe, if only for a while, in his presence.

…

“When you are attracted to people, it’s because of the details. Their kindness. Their eyes. The fact that they can get you to laugh when you need it the most.”
Jodi Picoult, Sing You Home

November’s Here.

My days are remarkably routine now. Wake up. Head in to Uni. Rain. Get stuck in traffic. Take some random snapshot to reduce the boredom. Get home. Repeat cycle.

…

“Since golden October declined into sombre November, And the apples were gathered and stored, and the land became brown sharp points of death in a waste of water and mud.”
T.S. Eliot