Monthly Archives: December 2015

Your Lover is Here For Sure

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“They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered” -F. Scott Fitzgerald

I found it at the perfect time. Isn’t that what they say, that timing is everything? He was quiet, and what little things I knew about him weren’t the best. He’d drawn cards from a pile no one should ever touch. And me, well, I’d gone all in on another relationship and had come up short, in the Fall.

It wasn’t love at first sight. There were no instant feelings of, “well maybe this could be forever”.  But there was a certain calm curiosity which left me always wanting more. We met a few times through mutual friends but never acted on anything. We’d share short flirty messages which wouldn’t follow through. Neither of us wanted to make the move because neither of us was sure. I’d always been the girl in a relationship, he’d always been the boy who only let someone in so far.

It took time and it took effort. You see, we were building something deeper and we had to constantly cultivate it. It was a beginning like no other beginning I have ever had. We’d open each other up and make ourselves be honest with ourselves. We would fight, but only to make one another better. We were two people who were never satisfied with just “good”, we wanted ourselves to be great.

You could say I had been waiting my whole life for this. I always thought that if I looked hard enough, love would find me again. There are people who sneak right into your life. While we’re preoccupied staring at something in the distant future, or hung up on the past, They just show up on your doorstep like, “hi there, it’s me and it’s always going to be me…”.

I was twenty when I met my soulmate. He crept in quietly through a door to my heart and made all of my past mistakes fall away. He made me realize not only who I was, but who I was destined to be. He intertwined my fingers with his and refused to let go. And just like that, there he was standing in front of me, making me love him for the rest of my life…

The Laughing Girl

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“She taught me all about real sacrifice. That it should be done from love… That it should be done from necessity, not without exhausting all other options. That it should be done for people who need your strength because they don’t have enough of their own.” -Veronica Roth

I remember the first time I heard her laugh. I was twelve, walking through a hallway before I even knew the smiling girl. This infectious happiness danced through the hallways when she opened her mouth to let out the laughter. She was everything you worked so hard in hopes of becoming. She made living life look like an afternoon at the carnival, jumping in head first with all the excitement of the world.

I was twelve the first time I watched the smiling girl wrap her arms around a boy, with all the love and possibility in the world in the palms of her hands. She’d lift her locker open in the middle of the hallway, letting out her singing laugh. She had such a gleam of determination to be happy and to see the good in everything and everyone she touched.

I was twelve when I watched the smiling girls’ heart break. The first time I watched her crumble to her knees and beg. Her laugh fell silent amongst the hallways and emptied lockers that summer. She turned to her friends in her time of need, and they lifted her up as best that they could. She was too young to have her spirit broken by something so small in the grand scheme of it all.

I was fifteen when I realized the smiling girl was addicted to love. Fifteen years old when I realized that the only reason she smiled was for the people around her, and not for herself. She put her heart and her soul into everything and everyone and left so little to herself to come home to. She left her laugh tucked away in our middle school lockers, in her first love, and in her best friends.

I was twenty-one when I felt a real connection to the smiling girl. She worked so hard for the piece of mind of others. She worked so hard for that smile on her face, always deserved, never given. I was twenty-one when the smiling girl told me she still loved the boy she had laughed through the halls with. I was twenty-one when the smiling girl reminded me to be optimistic about love, and that it was never too late to try again.

Over the Hills and Far Away

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“It is a frightening thought, that in one fraction of a moment you can fall in the kind of love that takes a lifetime to get over.”— Beau Taplin

I dialed the phone that afternoon, shaking a little. I try to keep my cool when I confide in him, but this time like many others, I tremble at the dial tone. Seven years of on and off again love and friendship. That is what he was to me. We fell into a pattern of disconnect and reconnect, always keeping one another at bay.

I was in love. Seven years down the line. It wasn’t the young love we’d once shared, but an enamored love in which I was deeply more fond of the circumstances than I was the actual man standing in front of me. The phone picks up after two short rings, and there he is, seven years later the same friendly, “hello”.

You see, we’d fallen into a pattern. We needed each other in a conventional way. The way that a tree’s roots need water to survive, even if it must break concrete to reach it. I confided too much, relying on him to pick me up when everything was falling apart. We would be worlds away, and I would still ask him to call.

That afternoon I fell back in love. Forty-five minutes on the line and five years later, I slipped back into the same pattern. After speaking on a relatively serious topic, he reverted to his charming self. We childishly fought about the past and spoke with a level of excitement about who we were becoming, and when we’d see each other again. Forty-five minutes and I thought, for a second, that maybe we had a chance. I became momentarily hopeful. Maybe I would come home and we’d find ourselves in the right place, at the right time, finally looking to ignite what we once had.

But I was wrong. Our light flirtation that afternoon had caught me up. It only took me forty-five minutes to believe that we were so close to piecing our relationship together again. While I was taking root, he was breaking concrete, searching for his water elsewhere. And maybe I had dizzily fallen for us once again, and maybe, while I believed we were growing together; we’d in fact been growing further and further apart…

Gone Girl

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“I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one’s self-respect.” -Mahatma Gandhi

“Athletic. Outgoing. Looking for a good time.” She writes, perfectly across the “about me” section of an online sugar daddy website. She guides the mouse to a poised and puckered photo of herself in tight workout gear, smiling innocently into the lens as if her charm could grab you through the screen. She had perfected the art, of getting what she wanted. The photo was just the beginning of the complex and self-proclaimed Internet personality she’d worked so hard to create.

I was twenty, the first time I heard a woman vocalize that she, in fact, did not plan to be independent. We grow up in this world where women have had to die for their common rights.  A place where under a quarter century ago, we couldn’t even vote for president.  Being mentored by several headstrong women and respectful men, I never imagined that not being self-reliant would ever be a reality. Staring at this girl who truly believed a man would be her only worth, deeply bewildered me.

It’s 6:03 am and she stares into the illuminated screen of her laptop. Charlie texted her three minutes ago, his flight had landed. She consciously gathers the remnants of the Victoria’s Secret packaging strewn across her wooden dorm floor, a gift note fluttering to the ground reading: “Can’t wait to see you in these” –Steven.

She takes a moment, staring at her dewy complexion, adjusting her belly-bearing top and yoga pants. Her nails are perfectly polished, her hair falling messily at her shoulders. She’s got it down to a science, and she know it. Before she runs out the door, she double clicks her mouse one last time and grabs her keys, solidifying a meeting next week with her fifth beau, Matt.

Castles Made of Sand

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“I opened my mouth, almost said something. Almost. The rest of my life might have turned out differently if I had. But I didn’t.” — The Kite Runner

We looked at one another but never into one another. We had worked so hard to create the perfect shell of what we believed love should look like. I remember the very first time we locked eyes, over fruity drinks and slurred verb-age lost over the past few years. We thrust ourselves forward, in hopes that we could fill one another’s empty voids, where love once lived. We were lost, however, very convincing. We created elaborate feelings we could delve into so deeply that we could hide from the unspoken truth. The unspoken words which would tell the true story of us.

Have you ever told yourself a lie so many times, that you eventually began to take it as the truth? I remember stepping out of the car, heated from an argument. Frustrated and perturbed I reached for the handle of my apartment, ready to never look back, as he walked to his car. I shut the door behind me and counted to five. Something within me just couldn’t let him go. It wasn’t the love or the lust we’d shared that called me back, it was the sheer effort it had taken to get to this point. It felt like I had worked so long to make him love me, but once it happened I realized it wasn’t right at all.

I open my door and run down the stairs, calling his name as he closed his car door. The question still choking in the back of my mind: why did I chase him one last time?

We’d ignore our frustration with one another with passive aggressive remarks. We’d grab each other’s hands and intertwine them inorganically. We’d hold on to the past and our initial drunken nights when everything felt new and so promising. It’s more lonely than being alone, being with someone who isn’t right for you.

Months later the spark would fade and fade, but we would stubbornly hold on. Our families loved each other, our friends thought we were perfect, but they didn’t see the disconnect. The lackluster push to spark the flame one last time, which would ultimately go unanswered. And the sting of the tears resting on my cheek, asking me why I held on so long.

Mr. Love

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“The spiritual journey is individual, highly personal. It can’t be organized or regulated. It isn’t true that everyone should follow one path. Listen to your own truth.”- Ram Dass

He enters a room with zero apprehension. The world is his fucking oyster, and he knows it. His demeanor would never give off that he has built himself on stories of far away places. He speaks of the most beautiful women in the world and makes you feel just little enough. He is, the I love you man.

I was a freshman in college when my professor asked my business lecture if we believed charisma is learned, or given at birth. All I could think of, was the I love you man and how effortlessly convincing he was. He made you feel special like you were a, once in a lifetime girl. He laughed and charmed his way into my life, and before I knew it, I was hooked.

The I love you man built himself up in order to hide his downfalls. The shrouded mystery and constant change hid his inability to form true ties to anything and anyone. As long as he kept moving, changing, innovating; he could grasp on to a few tales for the years to come.

I raised my hand that afternoon and gave a grey account of the I love you man. He was charming, charismatic because he had to be. He had learned to burrow his way into the live’s of others. He could use his deeply developed character to wrap around your ribcage in a matter of days, hours, minutes, just as quickly as he could snap your bones and suck the air from within your lungs. Actresses, models, writers, visionaries all littered his long list of loves. I often wondered how I had gotten trapped in the mix of it all…

Desperate, that’s how the I love you man will leave you. Pretty photos and the stories of the far away places and dreams will eat away at your soul. Your dreams will become small in the heat of it all, and when you watch the next pretty little girl step up to bat, you’ll feel tragically struck out.

Wiping the dirt from my fingernails was the easiest part, leveling the playing field was the hardest. Walking away from the shining light you once knew so well is hard, but having the blinding glare deter you and convince you that your path is wrong, is the biggest mistake you can ever make when the opponent is the I love you man.

BF

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“I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why.”—  John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men

When I think of the word “love” several things immediately come to my mind: unconditional, trust, happiness, sacrifice, and change. Growing up, we inadvertently fall into our first loves. The first time is in perceivable. One moment you’re in their car, going for lunch, innocently, without expectation. And then, in a flash, you are head over heels and can’t remember a life without them. My first love was swift. Not in years but in feeling.

I remember sitting there in class and feeling this connection. I hadn’t really had a lot of strong relationships up to that point. I think relationships thrive on friendship and I really wasn’t much good at it. We had a sport in common, we both loved to make fun of ourselves and others, and we were both seemingly lost in this giant fishbowl of confusion we’d later call high school. Love is tragic however, I’d like to believe, it’s also often triumphant. Late night phone calls would turn into five straight night sleepovers. Our families would turn into our second set of mom’s and dad’s. Everything would come full circle and eventually connect.

Sadly, it would do just that. We had a true love story of coming and eventually going. We’d grow up and grow out of our humorous selves, vying for more dry humor and new people to fill each other’s shoes. We’d gain friends and lose each other in the seas of parties, secrets, and miscommunication. All because we couldn’t face each other and be what we once were for one another: a friend. Sometimes things fall apart, but I don’t believe that things can’t ever fall back together. A deep love for another isn’t something you just walk away from. A devoted counterpart does not just walk into your life for no given reason, and then walk out just as fast as they once came in. Everything I have ever let go of had claw marks on it. Working hard to make something or someone a reality is not something easily forgotten, not in my book. So when I realized my first love was walking away, I stood firmly in front of her and admitted sometimes your first love isn’t a boyfriend or a girlfriend, sometimes your first love is your first true friendship, and I refused to let her walk away.

Snake Eyes

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“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” -Maya Angelou

She wasn’t ever satisfied. There was a dark empty void inside of her that reached desperately into the souls of others. Her name was snake eyes.

S and I grew up together, but we weren’t ever really close. We’d learn much later that we really weren’t all that different from one another. S was fun, daring, and overall pretty damn ballsy. She contained the ability to control and execute all things around her. I admired her character, or lack thereof because that’s what made her so strong. I’d later learn that the strength  I thought I admired was a simple makeshift shell she used to shield herself from the rest of the world. And when she would moult she always lose a little bit more of herself.

S was mean. A grade A snake of a girl, who would never recover from tragic events in her life. She searched desperately through parts and pieces of others, to create her own self. I remember watching her one night when we were out, sifting through groups of people, different conversations, with her snake eyes. She mimicked them, she copied her sister, she even created a girl with destructive habits from weekend flings. S was lost, but she would neverlet you know that.

Being young is confusing. It is trying for each and every one of us. S would take and take away from everyone she encountered, but she never gave back. She broke everything which surrounded her and tried to make the broken pieces a whole. Her devilish smirk can still be seen out of the corner of my eye when I’m out, surrounded by real genuine people. I still hear her false laugh and meek responses to things I’ve said. Her venomous palaver stinging in the back of my memory.

S was a girl who had lost everything. She was a girl we have all crossed and will continuously cross time and time again on this journey through life. S will cut you down and push you out, but you will win. Because S is powerless in all that she does. She is a fictitious serpentine who feeds off of power because she herself, is powerless.

The Man

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“No man has ever lived that had enough of children’s gratitude or woman’s love.” –William Butler Yeats

I’ve never told him how I feel. Growing up, things were tough. I loved to have a good time and would go to any length to have that fun. “I can’t think of a single thing my father ever bought me,” he says, as I’m riding in the passenger seat. I shift uncomfortably in the jeeps’ cushiony chair. The problem is: I can’t relate.

In fact, I can’t think of a single thing my Dad hasn’t bought me. “This one time, I bought a bike at a garage sale. Total shit” he laughs, adjusting his grip on the steering wheel, “but – I grabbed this piece of crap for 5 bucks, and remodeled the entire thing from scratch”. I smile to myself, admirably. “The bike was perfect when I was done with it. I got home from school one day and couldn’t find it..” he trails off as if the memory stings just a little too much. “He said, oh, that bike? Yea I sold it” he finishes. I glance out the big side window. I don’t really know what to say and I usually always know what to say. I’m so good with words when I’m talking to any other man, but with him it’s different.

“I’ve always loved station wagons” he begins another monolog, “My aunt had a brand new 56 wagon that she promised to me when I could drive. I ran my permit to her house, teeming with excitement” he glances down at the speedometer, “my aunt looked at me in confusion, saying my dad gave it to our neighbors twin’s to race. It was junked weeks before”.

His Dad never watched him play baseball. Never showed up to one single game as he was growing up before he passed away. There was something so tragic about listening to the man I love tell me that someone didn’t care for him and love him as much as they should have. The memory of a boy who just wanted one single thing in life he’d never get the chance to see: the love of his father.

He’s on a role so I let him vent. Every time I went against my father, every time I thought I hated him, I realize, I was so wrong. After he finishes the heartbreaking accounts I lean over to the drivers’ seat and kiss his cheek before I finally tell him exactly how I feel, “Thanks for everything you’ve ever done for me, Dad”.

Juicy

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“Human beings are funny. They long to be with the person they love but refuse to admit it openly. Some are afraid to show even the slightest sign of affection because of fear. Fear that their feelings may not be recognized, or even worst, returned. But the one thing about human beings that puzzles me the most is their conscious effort to be connected with the object of their affection even if it kills them slowly within” -Sigmund Freud

It was around 11 pm on a Saturday night. I had strategically ended up at some juniors house party who always laughed at the popular kids and called them, “preps”. I was a sophomore, but all of my friends were seniors. I opened the front door to the house which was bumping B.I.G.’s Juicy. A bunch of cigarette smoking hipsters standing around a glass table with a bottle of Jameson looked up and smirked…

Looking back on my sixteen-year-old self, I had to have looked about nineteen after I’d ditched the braces and grown into my all-too-quickly maturing body. I looked around with my best friend at the time, choosing a plush chair to sit in and cracked open the water bottle of vodka she’d stolen from her parents liquor cabinet. “It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine” blared the stereo, the last lines of lyrics I heard before I locked eyes on him. It was after a distressing week of hearing he’d been messing around again. Tonight wasn’t about that though. I shift my gaze to the “prep” name calling hipster I had learned to love and approached her on the makeshift dance floor in the kitchen. By then the vodka was kicking and I felt like I was invincible, dancing hand-in-hand with this chick I would lose contact with in years to come.

I feel a tug on my shoulder halfway through the Chili Peppers “All Around the World”, I can’t believe the cops haven’t come. It’s him. I wave a quick goodbye to my friend and roll my eyes as he says, “Can we talk?”. This might be the tenth time we’ve “talked” about our insurmountable toxic relationship we’d later call: “love”. I trot down the three small stairs off the back door and walk over to a corner away from a fire pit of mid-twenty somethings, lighting a joint. I put my sandal-clad foot against the wooden shed door and stand there sassily awaiting the explanation of why he feels the “need to talk” once again.

I’ve carefully orchestrated this entire situation. I know him like the back of my hand, so I wore this black skirt and crochet top he always liked. Deep down I’m hurting. Bursting at the seams with excitement that he’s approached me. I usually find myself doing some desperate act to grab his attention when we’re out, but right now I think I’m in control.

Fifteen minutes later our voices will have reached insurmountable levels, yelling in inebriated states. You see, we’re both very smart and we’re both disgustingly competitive, so naturally whoever yells and gets the most words in is right. By 1 a.m. his friend will awkwardly attempt to pull him away from our “conversation” and tell him it’s time to leave. I’m staying at my friends, so it’ll look like I don’t have a curfew (perfect).

It’s 1:45 a.m., my phone is dead, but luckily the girl throwing the party offers hers up to me. I only know one number by heart, other than my parents’ so I punch in the number and step outside.

Twenty minutes later he’ll pull up in his car, shaking his head at me as we lock eyes, each secretly accepting the fact that it’s never over.