Wearing My Heart On My Sleeve

Today for the first time, I remembered what happiness felt like. As I sat at my desk, I was inexplicably filled by the smile that resided on my lips. Lifted by a lightness that coursed through my veins, I finally felt my true weight: slender and graceful, I floated within the aura of serenity surrounding me. I knew not if I had left my pit of depression and had walked towards the light, now shining on my face or whether I had entered into a bubble shielding me from the misery of the world. But my location was not important. All that mattered was that where I was, there was no past. My present was painted with such contentment that any notions of the future were accepted calmly with no need for my pulse to quicken and my shoulders to tense. 

But then I made the mistake of looking down.

There is a heart shaped burn on my right forearm. As I was making tea a few days ago, I reached up towards the cupboard over the kettle and misjudged the distance. The steam from the spout rose onto the soft and sensitive skin between my wrist and elbow. I withdrew my arm in haste but it was too late and the damage was done. I sat with a cold compress against the wound for hours but the mark was made. 

In wearing my heart on my sleeve, I have gathered invaluable support from those around me. However, I can see that in my transparency, my misery has etched a constant mark upon me that refuses to be forgotten. Is there more sense in sticking a plaster and a smiley face over it until the burn dissappears or do wounds really heal better out in the open as old wives say? 

Hello Year Two Thousand and ......Five?

I began 2011 catapulted back to 2005. I shouldn't be surprised. It is almost impossible to return to places of the past and find yourself immediately able to reconcile the person that you are now with the person that you were then. And so I find myself sitting in the present on a bed of the past, contemplating the future and wondering how many people must find themselves in this situation on New Year's Day. All I can say is that I am glad to be ON the bed and not IN it...there is a difference, I will have you know.

The heating is off and the window ajar in order to expel some of the mugginess left over from last night.The grey continental humidity hangs over me in an oppressive cloud and I wonder if I was right to reject my present paradigm in favour of that of the past, if only for a weekend. I reflect on words exchanged over the auspiscious night of transition occurring but a few hours ago. I think about what a difference night makes to one's feelings, thoughts and emotions; But what is this difference? Is it a distortion of reality or, like after a little too much alcohol, a bringer of truth?

It is not yet light here, nor do I think it ever will be. The fog and the rain forbid me from reaching the clarity of the sun I am seeking. Are night and day as simple as they seem or is the beautiful ball of fire blinding? And does the darkness shed on my surroundings illuminate thoughts and feelings I could not previously access for it said then when one is deprived of one sense, others are accentuated?

Whatever the answer is, I must keep moving forward however much the past clings to me, sometimes like a sickness I cannot shake. Now is not the time to give into fear. I will live my life and I will seize each opportunity as it comes and today, maybe for the first time in many months, I can almost feel excited about where it will take me.

Bed of Love, Bed of Sorrow

Six months ago, I was blessed with a moment of happiness so pure and so true that it was painful.  I lay on my bed, nestled in the concave of Lol's warm body, held so tightly between his strong arms. I was so focused on that one all-powerful, all-consuming feeling that I could barely breathe. The intensity of the emotion grew within me to a dimension larger than my body could contain to the point where I felt my insides must surely crack rather than bear this unknown experience. I felt completely vulnerable: I could let any wall I had previously built around myself demolish for I knew that I was protected, safe in the utmost confidence that all that my heart reflected was mirrored in his. The beauty lay in the simplicity of the scene. It was enough to lie, feeling his smooth, warm chest against my back and his soft steady breath in my ear as our fingers remained interlaced and our jean-clothed legs intertwined. 

Never had I felt so content or fulfilled. Never will I again. 

Has it really been half a year since that moment? The specifics of time passing no longer make sense to me as my feelings seem bound by nothing. The difference is that they are now no longer a blessing: I am cursed to lie on that bed, the beginning of everything and nothing, each night, alone. Only pain resides there now, no longer infused into the folds of joy. It is the one physical reminder of love, in all its words, gestures and acts, that remains. The rest dwells in a box somewhere in the depths of my cellar, hidden but never forgotten and whether I want it to disappear or be unearthed, I cannot yet say. 

Deck the hall with boughs of holly. Falala lol lol lol lol lol...

It’s that time of year again… “the most wonderful time of the year” where we wonder what actually happened to the last 365 days  and why something magnificently fabulous hasn’t yet occurred. The year is full of such instances. Time seems to be measured by these cyclical moments of tradition which leaves us in contemplation, evaluating what we have and have not done, where we are and where we have not yet been.

All I know is that I did not plan on being here. Literally. I should be in Barcelona right now, wrapped in love and a layer of tapas-induced squishiness. It is no longer pride that prevents me from going although, rest assured, I retain my dignity. The fact is that I am no longer sure I want to grace the Catalonian region with my presence. It has been some time, I believe, since I last transported myself in my thoughts and dreams to wherever Lol is. However, this does not mean that I have given up on the fantasy that he will come to me from the end of the world or wherever he has disappeared to in the big wide universe. In my weak inability to accept that this will never happen, I remain static. I produce a semblance of moving forward in my life when in fact, I move only in a direction that would still enable me to be found by him.

It could be called progress to say that in the fantasy, once he does arrive, I find myself no longer able to melt into his arms. The more sand accumulates at the bottom of the limitless hourglass, the more I remain frozen, uncertain how to proceed. My love remains, constant yet increasingly inaccessible every day and I feel something that I can neither reach nor use.  How I will digest this concept over time remains unknown, even to me. 

Watching The Ball Drop...

We talk, we joke, we laugh, we flirt...

"Jeez, Lol, you are so annoying!", I say amongst a fit of giggles as I throw my stress ball at him. 

As I watch it propelled in front of me, I freeze in sudden confusion then grief as I watch it drop with the realisation that he is not Lol and that my happiness was short-lived.

Emptiness drained by excitement fills me to the brim. 

Sadness banished by smiles returns unabashed. 

Loneliness driven away by lust reclaims its rightful territory. 

Night falls on the light in my eyes as the man in front of me transforms from comfortingly familiar into the stranger he really is for in their eagerness to feel and forget, my heart and mind had been all too willing to be deceived, if only by the longing that lies within them.

Victim of Interstitial Space

As the snow falls, I rifle listlessly through yet another glossy women’s magazine, a previous addiction turned monotonous habit. Clothes, sex, beauty, men, relationships, clothes, etc… After a decent decade of instruction from these money-sucking pastimes, the disciple has become the master and I am starting to believe there are only so many ways in which the “Fifty ways to rock his world” article can be regenerated.

However, what bothers me the most today is the Relationship section. Yet another piece, telling me that I am a modern woman in an age where I need no longer be submissive to the dominant alpha-men. But how can this be true? I muse. Around me, I see powerful women, still unable to speak their mind. They do not lack intelligence. In fact, they employ all their resources in the ruse of getting what they want from a man without him realising it. This is a far cry from the twenty first century sensitive Beta male who talks, listens, is thoughtful and comes programmed to be able to lower toilet seats and do the washing up.

The truth is that men say they want a feisty thought provoking woman, that they enjoy the bafflement of the weaker sex clubbing them over the head with a witty retort. However, once they recover from the initial amazement, they feel the sore bump on the head when they realise what they have to contend with: the modern woman wants to be in the relationship on equal terms, she is no subordinate. Appealing as this is in theory, man has not yet evolved to be able to cope with the technicalities of this: the brains of the trophy girl must remain concealed under her head of perfect hair. Reaching forward towards equality with past traditions clinging at my skirts, I find myself trapped in the interstitial space between one era and the next and it seems the transition period will be anything but smooth.  

The Kiss Of Life

The beauty of a faithful romantic relationship is the sacred often unspoken bond of trust that is formed between two people. From the moment it is in place, an enchantment bewitches the couple and casts a spell of amnesia over them, causing them to forget kisses and touches past. When the bond is broken however, the enchantment unfortunately does not immediately lift but instead transforms into the deepest of curses: longing for the caresses one is deprived of perhaps forever. And so I found myself caught in this prison of a paradigm and the pain of it, as it always does, stabbed me unexpectedly.

“Something good needs to happen”, I said to my friend, looking down glumly. I had dragged myself over to him, resting my arms on his office desk and said in a tiny voice that I wasn’t looking forward to training. He knew what was wrong, he knew I was sad, the girl who usually thrives on her thrice weekly cardio-induced endorphin rush. As an incentive to keep going, he offered me a lift which I gratefully accepted.

When we arrived at the gym, I was enveloped in my misery and the stuffy car heating as I leaned towards him for the usual air-cheek-kiss. However, as our skin was about to make contact, time stopped. His eyes, previously warm and laughing, were now serious and filled with intent as, very slowly and very deliberately, he turned his head to face me. Though surely only a few seconds long, the moment lingered tenderly as his soft and full lips found mine with assurance. As the kiss ended, I remained still, paralysed in the confusion of the moment passed and the surprise at my ease in responding.

“That was to cheer you up.”, he said softly. “Did it work?” I mumbled incoherently, still overwhelmed with unintelligible thoughts and feelings. “I think so.” He kissed me again, as briefly but still as kindly as the first one. Then he left.

A bridge had been crossed. The burden of anxiety concerning that moment was no longer as the event had occurred before I had a chance to decide if the time was right. I turned, shell-shocked, towards the double doors. The paradigm had shifted. I then lifted my foot, still uncomprehending, and walked one step further.