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.

For Better Or For Nothing

I knew what it was to feel warm for a while. By no means was I impervious to the cold but the knowledge that there would always be someone to warm my feet at night was more than enough to sustain me through any chill that came my way.

Always... such a treacherous word and a cruel illusion. What has become of it today? No life-long institution remains at present. People used to say "for better or for worse". Now, the latter two words of that phrase seem to be obselete for it it has become "for better or for someone (or at least) something else". 

While the recession deprives us of job security, marriage no longer provides comfort in its steadfast endurance. One can trust nothing and no one it seems. And so we learn that words, be they written or spoken, hold no true value. 

He told not only myself but his family of his ardent love for me. Together, we dreamt to the end of the world and back. But in the end, today I remain here, standing (almost), bereft of the dreams he stole away from me as I blinked, ignorant now of how to form new ones in order to begin again. 

Coming Out of the Cocoon?

As I walked home today, I looked up. It was one of those rare occasions where the sky really was a clear midnight blue worthy of Mary Poppins. Stars were immediately apparent, their twinkling white brightness was deeply contrasted against the rich and brilliant colour of the heavens. As is customary, I began to wish. As soon as words formed in my head, I had to check myself: I was not sure if I had been wishing for Lol because it was my deepest desire or because it was now a habit. My head was swimming with confusion for a brief moment. Was this moving on? And more importantly, was I ready to try stepping I into a world without the weight of heart break, destruction and general apocalypse on my shoulders? During the last few months, it had almost been easy to get comfortable in the depths of my pit. Too eagerly perhaps, I had set up house, superficially transforming the dark hard concrete into a cosy cocoon whose depths I wondered if I had begun to emerge from. The question was, was I coming out a moth or a butterfly? And even if I came out a butterfly, what good was that if I tried to fly with my broken wings?

Empty Spaces

There are empty spaces everywhere I go, except on the occasional bus ride which is most inconvenient. Those are the spaces Lol sneaks his way into. I see him sitting on public transport, I see him in waiting rooms, I see him on the sofa next to me when I’m watching television. Every time I leave the house, I look for his car in the empty parking spots on my road. It is never there, just like he is never there to fill the emptiest space of all which is the one inside of me where joy used to dwell.

I do what I am told: I eat, I sleep, I socialise. In fact, I have one on Sinead O’Connor as I am booked with one thing or another almost every night and occupied most of the day.  I may be completely exhausted but at least I am busy. But people were wrong: filling time does not fill the hole in my life. My heart and mind are haunted by the shadow of the man whose whereabouts escape me, whose thoughts do not reach me and whose love has deserted me. No amount of activity seems to alter this, and in truth, I cannot tell if I wish it to or not for perhaps at this point, it is still preferable to be accompanied by a ghost than to be truly alone.

Rock Climbing Failure #1

“There are many things that I wish for and without wanting to sound like a martyr, many of those things are not for me but for the people around me”, my mother mused. “I wish I could make you happier but I can’t bring him back.”

It was a simple sentence but it pierced me to the core. My eyes filled with tears and I felt the suffocating bubble of misery close in around me. I looked past  its claustrophobic film, trying to stop my tear ducts from going into overdrive in such an embarrassingly public place.

The last couple of weeks have been dark and yet sometimes I have felt like I had pulled myself to my feet, ready to attempt climbing a little further away than the rock bottom I dwelled in. Suddenly however, I found myself propelled back to the depths of my pit with nothing to grip onto to. The attempt had failed.

And yet, though I stand no longer, I sit instead of lie on the hard painful ground. There are more engulfing waves to come but I am confidant that I might find my feet once more.

Family Time

I sit around the dining room table and watch the assortment of distorted mirrors sitting around me. With interest, I examine the smattering of features we share which I never took the trouble to notice before. My father and his sister share the same downward-facing crescent-shaped eyes. The corners of his mouth however, you can see if you look closely, are turned upward whereas gravity has its pull on hers. One has chosen to make lemonade whereas the other has chosen not to forget sour times: free will has played its part, it seems.

Seated opposite my mother, she became the subject of my intrigued gaze. As she leant forward, I watched the skin across her collarbone fold into hundreds of microscopic creases I had never noticed before. Those lines etched the gap between her and I. I began to wonder where I would be in my life when my body would begin to betray the age and the weight of the world it had carried which already burdened my mind.

I like to believe that I am original in my dreams and innermost desires. However, at the end of the day, my aspirations, despairingly complicated as they may seem, are inherently basic: someone who will see and feel the wrinkles across my skin and tell me I am beautiful and that I am loved. Perhaps that is a blessing that is worth more than any amount of trips around the world can ever amount to. But as I stand still where the path begins, the most intricate and complex of trips seems easier to plan than the one and only journey we must leave up to fate.