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.

Just One More...And Then Tomorrow

It was just one of those days…

I woke up this morning to a snow white paradise outside which was perfectly enchanting until I was required to get into my horseless carriage and drive… or should I say skid through it. My day brightened for a split second along a steadier part of the journey where suddenly a notion entered my head: I was too good for Lol. I felt light and happy. I never thought I would able to think that healthy thought.

It didn’t last for long, of course. I soon forgot about it when I wasn’t able to park where I wanted to because it was too icy for the car to pass through safely so I had to get my beautiful boots wet as I rushed to be on time for the meeting I was already half an hour late for… only to discover that the person I was meant to be seeing was also stuck in weather-caused traffic. This resulted in my being left to sit (thankfully in the warm indoors) on my own for an additional forty five minutes with nothing to do but play games on my mobile phone which may be amusing for a short while but do not go down well for that length of time.

I then went to the gym for a killer session only to be shouted at by my trainer for doing absolutely everything wrong. Usually I come out feeling pumped on a rush of endorphins but today, I exited feeling beaten, bruised and dejected. On my return home, I overloaded on carbohydrates which made me feel better for about thirty seconds before the bloated “you’ve eaten too much” guilt came upon me. My response was obviously to reach for the Nutella jar but divine intervention seemed to occur when I sliced my finger open instead of the bread and gave up. To top it all off, as my father helped the tearful mess that I was with the plaster, he managed to tell me off for not using a breadboard. More tears were spilt as I wiped my blood off the counter.

It was one of those days… and to top it off, one more day where Lol was not there. I could not be comforted just by sending him a message let alone calling him. I could not feel his voice embrace me in his absence, let alone have him pull me into the concave of his warm body to hold me. Yes, it was just one more of those...and tomorrow is just another day.

Please Don't Stop The Music

When I run, I always put my MP3 on shuffle mode. On a lucky day, the combination of songs will be so good that my feet will keep moving effortlessly on the treadmill. Time flies by. My spirits lift. On a worse day, I will spend two minutes between every song clicking the forward button compulsively and then berating myself for doing so too quickly hence passing something I wanted to listen to. I am bored. I try to distract myself by practicing my fractions and calculating how many fifths, sixths or even twelfths of a minute I have left…until the next minute. Nevertheless, the seconds drag on. The prerogative of the shuffle button being to propel me into the unknown after each song, it is unfortunately thorough and refuses any predictability whatsoever including the option of returning to the song I had just heard by pressing the back button.

And so when I plugged my earphones in for the first time in ages today, it could have gone either way. I tentatively put one foot in front of the other. Slowly, I felt the bass reverberate through my body and the rhythm course through my veins. With every heartbeat, an almost forgotten sense of unpolluted optimism was pumped to my head. I swayed my hips and tossed my hair. The gentle click-clack of my stilettos exuded a strength and confidence that had long been absent.

But as the lyrics died down, the sounds of reality filled my head. The next melody was too long in coming. One step forward, three steps back…