I still think about you

Though a huge part of our largely-silent, post-dating acquaintanceship is based on the idea that neither of us have any interest in the other — that whatever happened between us is something entirely left in the past to wither and rot — I still think of you.

And saying that I miss you wouldn’t quite be the right term, either, though I know that admitting you still think of someone you used to love immediately conjures up images of someone sitting alone in their room, listening to sad songs, and crying. I’m not crying. I am no longer tricking myself into thinking that we should have made it work (or that it was even a possibility), and the mourning period of your loss has passed. It’s more now a quiet sadness about the love that has disappeared from my life. We knew each other so well, and meant so much to each other, and now we don’t speak at all. It’s as though all of those moments we lived together have just evaporated behind us, and that seems such a shame.

I don’t want you back, it’s just that, when I hear from you, or see you, or hear through the grapevine of something that you’ve been up to, thoughts of you linger. I think about what you’re doing, who you’ve become without me, what parts of your personality have risen to the top or almost faded away now that I am no longer a daily influence on your life. I guess it’s kind of selfish to center so many of my questions about you around our relationship, but you have to understand that I only knew you in one context.

I know you still think about me? Your texts shows that. I also know, it’s selfish, it’s childish. Nothing screams “immaturity” like wanting to catch up with someone only to shortly thereafter find out exactly what percentage of their life has to do with you still, but I’m curious. As much as I genuinely find myself thinking of what your life must consist of, it would be comforting to think that you have the same moments of reflection about me. Tell me that something as strong as we felt, strong enough to turned my life upside down, sort of echoes through the rest of your life, occasionally tapping you on the shoulder to remind you of a past that we so clearly left behind. Tell me, because the world would seem a bit too cold if it didn’t.

Yes, I am still curious. I wonder what has happened to you since I last saw you, touched you, whispered something in your ear. I wish that getting coffee and catching up like old friends was something acceptable for the two of us to do, and not something that came with a million implications about how desperate the initiating party must be. But, in the interest of honesty, I do wonder. It would be nice to feel that all of that love wasn’t meant to just be destroyed by the window of ugliness we experienced towards the end. Also, guess I’d like to know that your life has gone as well as I had once hoped it might, and that what you have become is something that you can sit with at the end of the day and be proud of. And if love is something that you spend your day looking for, I hope you find it..

Icarus wings.

I’m learning (maybe more than I ever have before) to enjoy the now, to live in the present. But I want also to learn to “make space for the unknown future”—recognizing that it could very well bring with it “yet-to-come surprises” that are—it’s possible—better than what I originally planned, wished for, wanted, or thought needed.

So I’m working hard to lift my eyes, lift my heart, lift my hopes to see the wonder, mystery, grace, and whimsy in the uncharted future. To make space for possibility. To embrace ambiguity.

To lean in, even when I don’t know where it’s going.

It might not seem like much from the outside looking in, but I assure you—from the inside looking out—it’s demanding an enormous amount of courage for this tattered heart of mine.

Never give up on true love.

Sometimes I think I have felt everything I'm ever gonna feel. And from here on out, I'm not gonna feel anything new. Just lesser versions of what I've already felt.

This is why I pretended not to see you.

We were tumultuous; we were the happiest accident that ever was made. Yet, that was it. We never matured, we never progressed, and if love is kindness, all we had to offer was chaos. All along, we made up one another in our minds, in our wildest dreams. In reality, we never wanted one another at our worst, but didn’t it hurt worse when we didn’t want each other even at our best? It could not have been more of a stereotypical mess. We wore ourselves out wearing each other in, and we yielded the same catastrophic results day in and day out. Isn’t insanity defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results?
Well, as it turns out, I do not want to be insane any longer.

This is how moving on looks like..

Moving on is not like a birthday, you can’t count down the hours ‘til it arrives and you can’t mark it on a calendar and you can’t call up your friends to help you celebrate. You can’t plan for it and you can’t conclude it by blowing out a candle. When moving on happens there will be no announcements, no notifications, no congratulations. There will be no parade; only you will know. Moving on is like aging that way, if aging happened backward. If the passing of days made you new and young, if your condition only had room to improve. Instead of a throbbing pain in your right knee forcefully, increasingly making its presence known, first with a whisper and then with a mumble and then with a shout, ‘til you can’t move, ‘til you can’t walk; moving on is gradual like that except when it’s over, you can walk just fine. You can run, even.

Moving on is like this: one day you forget the taste. The next, you forget the smell. Then the touch. Then the laugh. Then the smile. Then the jokes. Then the eyes, the hair, the hands, the feet. You forget the pulses, the beats, the rhythms and how you sometimes felt like they all belonged to you. You forget the words; finally, you forget the voice that spoke them. Moving on is like one day, you’re walking or reading or drinking the sun and one of those footprints, one of those artifacts will creep into your consciousness, “already seen,” the French call this, déjà vu, and you won’t know where it belongs or how it got there. All it takes is a familiar laugh, a recognizable word and you are transported to who knows where. You are a confused paleontologist now, scrambling to make sense of things left behind, trying to reunite the right dinosaur with the right bones. The scar from his burst appendix goes here, the part of his leg that doesn’t grow hair belongs there, I think this is his morning breath but maybe it belongs to someone who came before him; some other ghost, some other relic. His taste is an aftertaste now, his crow’s feet a souvenir with no place to call home. That’s what moving on is like.

Moving on is not like beginning a new chapter, it’s like beginning a new book — with each turned page, the last story you read fades into the background. A fairy tale that becomes just another book on a shelf; folded corners and underlined words the only reminder of how you used to touch and hold and love it. Moving on is when you begin to forget the intricacies of a character you knew intimately, you forget what he did for a living and the way he prepared grilled cheese and the nickname he had for his first girlfriend. You forget how he lost his virginity, you forget his middle name.

Moving on is waking up without a sour feeling in your stomach, looking at a familiar menu and ordering something different, taking the direct route to a destination and not the one that crosses a path you once set in stone. Moving on is when you think about him and don’t punish yourself for it, when he begins to evoke more of a scientific response than an emotional one, like “This is a 6’0” blonde-haired person who exists,” and not “This is a person I wish I’d never met; this is a person who has made me less of one.” Moving on is not to destroy or to combust or to set ablaze, it is simply to move, to advance through space and time, to leave behind the familiar dull of heartbreak for the new, the unknown, the strange. Moving on is a bird flying south for the winter who decides maybe the warmth isn’t so bad, who decides maybe it’ll stay there for awhile; moving on is like freedom, is what moving on is like.

I will forget you.

I will forget you and if that doesn’t sound romantic, it’s because it isn’t. It’s a simple inevitability, a truth colder than the last night we spent together. Remember that night? Gosh! What year was that? When I woke up in the morning and felt nothing familiar, that’s when I knew it was over for good. At least, that’s what I think happened. I fill in the blanks sometimes because I’ve already begun to forget.

I remember the color of your hair, but not the color of your laugh. I remember your name, that one’s easy; I don’t remember how your parents say it in their native tongue (I forgot that one the second you told me). I remember that you exist, that we spent some of our time together for what now feels like a blip, a sneeze, a little nothing. But I forget everything else, like what brought us together and what drove us apart. And mostly everything that happened in between that.

I forget what it’s like to kiss you and what it’s like to want to. I forget what it feels like to hold your hand, to be wrap inside your arms. I forget what it’s like to trust you, to believe in you, to need you. I forget what it’s like to think that I’d never forget any of it. For a long time, I thought I never would. You and I both know you left ghosts behind, but they seem to have found someone new to haunt. Maybe it’s you.

The inside jokes have already dissolved into unordered words with no punchline. The gifts have been reduced to objects whose saving grace is their monetary value, no meaning and all function. There are photographs, somewhere, but I’m not the person posed in them anymore and whoever that is sitting next to me, all dressed up in your costume and wearing your mask, well, that’s not you either. But what do I know about who you are? I forget that part, if I ever knew it to begin with.

I won’t forget you the way I won’t forget the pain of getting a wisdom tooth removed. Like something that happened to me once and then unhappened to me and then didn’t matter anymore.

But I will forget you where it counts, like in the eyes and in the mornings and in the moments that felt and looked and tasted a lot like love. I will forget you in those places because I already have.

Distance has so little to do with forgetting.

 

DANCE OF LIFE by Joe D' Mango

There were two hearts that met in a dance.  That moment was magical.  There was a sweet song playing, there was harmony…and soon…love in the air.  They fell in love and started building castles with their dreams and promised forever with all certainty.  But, somewhere, in the midst of the fun, they got lost in the dance, something went wrong, but they can never do anything.  They were just drifting away, their fortress falling apart.  There were so many questions…but no one had an answer.

Then the music stopped…and there was silence…

 When we truly loved someone, we give our best and let that person see the pureness of our intention.  But sometimes, that person makes us cry and hurts us for the wrong reason.  That someone must have loved us, but he has not loved us enough to make him stand for what he truly felt.

Now, we are faced with the seemingly impossible task of forgetting.  We have burdened ourselves long enough, but we still can’t get out of this emotional trap.  Let us remember that the more we try to forget someone we love…the more painful letting go will become…

Sometimes, we never had to take that person out of our hearts at all…for he will always be there…no matter how we drive him away…It isn’t his presence that make this difficult.  It is our stubbornness to accept our destiny that aligns forgetting next to impossible.  We keep a cold face but deep in our hearts, there is still that lingering hope for reconciliation.  Somehow, we still believe that we can rekindle small embers and relight the fire that once burned in our hearts.  These thoughts give us hope… but also breed the seeds of loneliness and despair.

The only way to forget is to accept…and the only way to move on is to look ahead…and let the footprints of the past…be blown by the wind of time…only then can our hearts find a partner in the dance of life…and hopefully…never get lost again…

Wine after whiskey

Feeling beat up today. Just physically tired and sleepy.. Anyway, I heard this play on the radio and thought of you. I wanna tell you that this is my song for you, but cant and don't want to. It doesn't feel right. It's like trying to spin the world the other way. I don't wanna mess with what I have now.

Love this part the most.
"Once you've tasted love that strong
You can't go back and you can't settle on anything less
And that's what gets me"

Keep Calm and Trust God.

To make us the best we can be, God will keep bringing the same tests to us, time & time again, until we pass them. Doesn't mean it doesn't hurt.

I choose to smile and act goofy through it.

anywhere anyplace I go you feel like home to me..

Well, I'm headed north to what I swore I wanted
And trying not to buy into my doubts
But I just can't seem to keep myself from wondering
Why I'm jealous of all them headlights headed south

uhm. an old email to myself..

I may think that my only option is to swallow my anger or throw it on someone's face. There's a third option. I can just let it go. and only when I do that it is really gone and I can just move forward. and that is the perfect ending to my perfect love story but this wasn't mine. mine is still out there, waiting for me..

4 texts from G prompted this post...

It was him..
Looking into our past.
Still blaming an old friend for our demise.
It took about 20hours for his messages to sink.
Then it all came flooding back.
The way we loved.
The way we were happy.
The way we fought.
The way I changed my life to fit his.
The way I fought to make it last.
The way I was left to pick up the pieces.
The way it ended.
So at 1am yesterday, i said Fuck it!
It wasn't my friends fault.
It wasn't my family.
It wasn't me.
It was him..