Author Archives: Devon Marie Bogart

Persist to Memory

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“I have never forgotten, and I can’t imagine you have, and I’ve thought of it over the years. It was so good, when it was good, I kept thinking. How could it go wrong?” – George R.R. Martin

I was 20. I had four time zones set on my phone. I think the funniest part about it was that I checked them so religiously. My boyfriend at the time was foreign, but even he didn’t have a place in the faction. The four differing time slots were composed of each place he had been (that I knew of) over the past four years. And when I looked at them, I felt as if, for a moment, I was with him again.

When someone leaves, you hold on to pieces of things that make it seem as if they had stayed. Whether conscious or not, we all do this in some form. Mine are the cards. Each boyfriend I’ve had (there hasn’t been many) has given me a card or card(s). I have a perfect stack of old greeting cards for birthdays, graduations, anniversaries; you name it, shoved into my bedside table. I’ve held on to every single one, even the 3-foot tall one I got from my very first boyfriend in high school that I hadn’t even ever managed to tongue kiss.

Between him and I there had been a lot of material objects I could still hold onto. Cards and a pressed rose from our first Valentine’s day when he asked to win me back. Even old cell phones I couldn’t ever part with due to the fear of losing all of the T9 texts on love, fighting, and ultimately the heartbreak; and everything in-between. But all of those things were from years ago. Now I was in college, and he well, he was wandering the world, trying to make himself whole.

I’d trudge through the snow and stare down at his current time zone, whatever tropical wonderland he was in, I could be there too for a moment. Australia was my favorite. It would be tomorrow where he was and I’d think to myself that he had an entire day on me, an extra 24 hours. And with each passing hour I was hoping he was on a track of fulfilling his inclination to himself, but mostly, hopefully, a day closer to sharing a time zone, with me.

By the fourth zone, years had passed but I still held on to the hope. The hope of waiting through all of the different places, phases, and the hours in between. I knew that he was my end game and that over the years he would continuously wander. But I knew he would always find himself home. Home, I always thought, was me. Now I stare at the varying clock hands and wish I could turn them all back. Back to a time when I could make the decision to not be so naive and blind to the fact that he wasn’t ever coming home.

Maybe in that time I could have worked towards letting go or throwing out the greeting cards. But ultimately, I can’t bring myself to regret it. The clock hands are still poised perfectly in each of his past destinations, and the beautiful heartbreak of the ticking clocks is just another commodity that will find it’s way into my bedside table.

 

Sacrifice

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“He still, all these years later, shines brighter to me than other people. Even after I got over him, I was never able to extinguish the fire completely, as if it’s a pilot light that will remain small and controlled, but very much alive.” –Taylor Jenkins Reid, Maybe in Another Life

 

I pull myself from a deep sleep. My heart is pounding as I struggle within the first few moments in-between dream state and reality. The chorus of “Sacrifice” by The Expendables rings out into the darkened room, and then *snap* I’m back to my real world, gray sheets crinkled in my palms.

I’d become deeply self-aware over the past two years. From dreams to my reality and ultimately consciousness, I felt deeply connected and mindful of all of my states. The dreams had been coming in waves, and when they did they were consistent for weeks.

I stretch out my legs and reach for the glass of water that still has  the condensation melting around it from when I poured it. It was the summer of 2009, that’s the memory of the dream I’d just had for the fourth night in a row.

And then I am hurtled into nostalgia

I look down at my tanned legs in the Honda and wish my feet didn’t feel so hot and dry from the hours spent in the sand. I’d been here before, and not just in the reoccurring dreams. I reach down for a cell phone that rivals a brick, and then glance out the dirty passenger window, staring at a tall white fence.

That’s when the music starts. 

Where I would have been with a different plan
Like the tide upon the sand
It washed away from me

The guitar rifts shake the small sand colored car, and I smile as the condensation around my cup drips onto the middle of my bare thigh. I’m singing, and not in a conventional way. I’m not ashamed, I’m belting out this song and dancing as wildly as you possibly can in a two door sedan. That’s when I notice the laughter of someone besides me. I can’t ever see this person, although I know exactly who he is. His blurred silhouette also holds a cold cup of sugary ice. This memory, this dream, is so pure and untainted and I can play it back for nights on end. But, I can never bring to focus the other individual.

When I get to the chorus I feel a sense of euphoria, and once the song ends, my counterpart and I are sitting breathless, side by side in his car. I feel as if the speakers are relieved from their burden of blasting the high-octane music. Every time I turn to face him, however, I find myself alone. The music has stopped, the Ipod is nowhere to be found near the hanging AUX cord. And when I reach for the console I pick up both melted cups of Slurpee and leave them outside on the curb.

There’s a certain level of consciousness that allows you to realize the current going on’s in your life. Although playing back the memory feels good, I can’t bring that person back into focus and, I believe, for good reason. Falling under a spell of nostalgia is a beautiful moment, but that’s all it is: a moment. The dream ends, and I am pulled back to reality, where I reach for the glass of water and abandon the idea of the Slurpee cups, melting silently along the hot cement curb.

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.