August is Over

1: Spending more time drunk/intoxicated than sober. Needs no explanation.

2: Cleaning… clean, rearrange your room, decide you don’t like it and change it back, throw out old crap you’ve been hoarding for years. Whatever you want because you think it’ll take your mind off it.

3: I don’t believe in rebounds, it’s wrong to enter into a relationship when you’re not yet ready, so lots and lots of mindless animal sex and one night stands. (FYI this doesn’t have to stop when you’re over said person)

4: Delete… Deleting all remnants of said person from your life, conversation histories, presents, txts, everything.

5: Get creative! Channel your hurt into art or literature, and if you suck at that (god help you) but admire the art of others. 

6: Mourn… when you realise all your hurt is completely and utterly gone.

7: Move on… Only when you’re ready to, don’t let anyone else tell you it’s time, you’ll know when it is. 

8: Look back and try to remember it as a learning experience and not something you’re bitter about, remember the happy memories. But leave it at that.

Sometimes I feel like love is like searching for something, but you don’t quite know what exactly you’re searching for, it’s only when you find it do you realise what it truly is, that it is what you were in search of. But as is the case in most quests of searching, you can become distracted by somethings you stumble upon whilst searching for what you’re truly looking for, and I guess it bewilders you for a while, it captivates you and commands your attention, and then eventually you set it aside and you keep searching.

I guess it’s kinda like when you’re riffling through your closet, looking for an outfit to wear, but you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, and while you search for that perfect outfit, you find things you forgot you had, and other such things that you try on in the process of finding your perfect outfit. And at times you think you’ve got the perfect outfit, but you take another glance as you’re about to walk out the door, and realise it’s not it. So you keep looking and eventually you find exactly what you were looking for. And don’t get me wrong, sometimes you lose all hope, but then you try on something in vain and it just fits. I guess you really do just have to keep searching.

Sometimes I have these thoughts, and I don’t know at all if they are normal, or sane for that matter but regardless of the morality of these thoughts I have them, sometimes frequently and at other times not so often. I have thoughts of being dead, or not existing, vanishing off the face of the earth and I wonder what the lives of those in my life may be like if I were to die tomorrow or if I never existed at all. Sometimes I wonder what impact it would have, would I leave a crater in their lives, an un-fillable void. Or perhaps it would not even register as a blip in their day-to-day life. Perhaps none of this is sane or normal but I think about such things.

I think about how much better her life might be if she had never met me and never loved me, how there would be one less broken heart in the world, how instead of meeting me maybe she would have found a man worthy of her to last her forever, oh if only I never existed. Other times I wish I had died long before I met someone else who left me broken and disjointed, feeling hollow and empty unable to trust and love fully.

I think we all like to feel like our lives matter and that people around us care, most of the time I tell myself certain people in my life would be devastated if I were to die today or tomorrow. But the reality stands that we all make small foot prints in each others lives mostly insignificant, but occasionally we make foot prints that paint a path and when we’ve known someone long enough, or touched their heart meaningfully this path takes us on a journey that binds us to others forever whether you are living or not. 

Do you remember how I would always say that we were close, but never close enough. Not until I could feel your heartbeat.

And then the night came where we lay next to each other, chest to chest, I placed a hand on your back, just over your heart and at first I couldn’t feel a thing. But soon as the clock stopped ticking around me, when the wind stopped whispering and the noises of the outside world fell silent. I could feel it. Your heart beating inside your chest. And it was just the most magical thing I have ever felt.

I started to count it, whispering in your ear as I did so and soon you did the same. 1, 2, 3, 4… It didn’t take long before we were whispering those numbers in unison. 9… 10… 11… That was the night I stopped believing we were two hearts, because we weren’t… No, we were two souls dwelling in a single heart.

I remember the times you would call me at night. Somehow you instinctively knew when I was awake. It was good to hear your voice even though we weren’t seeing each other anymore. Often you would be high or wasted but it didn’t matter, you were more open and so much more vulnerable. I liked that because you knew you were so much more exposed but you would call me anyway. It was like you trusted yourself to be vulnerable around me. We would always talk until you fell asleep and I would always stay on just a little longer, listening to you breathing just to make sure you were fully asleep so I could hang up without the beeping sound waking you when I ended the call.

My heart would always be racing as I listened to you sleep. Because the last thing you would say was that you loved me, usually half asleep you would say my name and pause for a little while before saying it. It was hard to hear because I loved you so much and it killed me that you weren’t mine. So all I could reply with was “I…” and I would always pause and wait for you to fall asleep before saying the rest. I was really afraid. So I would just lay there in my bed, my heart pumping a mile a minute and I would just listen to you breathing softly, and soon my heart would slow until my breathing matched yours. Breath for breath. Only then would I say “I love you too” and hang up to fall into a blissful sleep.

When we love someone it’s all the little seemingly insignificant things that we come to love. You know all the characteristics about them that no one else picks up on but us because we love them, and it’s the collection of all those things that makes our love for them so strong.

Like her eyes, those very ones that hundreds of people would have stared into at some point, but when we do it we see something far deeper and in time it becomes like a precious gem that we love to see sparkle. We learn to read everything about this person we love through their eyes alone.

It’s that smile that to the outside world is just a smile but to us it’s not just a smile, because we know theres always something that lies behind that smile. We hope it’s us that makes them smile so, and we distinguish the meaning of each and every variant of that smile that is seemingly the same to the outside world.

It’s all the little things that no one but you would know or pick up on, it’s the crinkle in their nose when they laugh. It’s the way they say your name unlike anyone else. The way they raise an eyebrow when they tell a lie. The way they have to sleep on a certain side in a certain position. The way they have a favourite top that has a ton of holes in which you tickle them through. it’s all the freckles they have that you’ve made a map of in your mind. It’s the way you can stare at eachother for hours and not say a word. It’s all those little things that mean nothing to anyone else but you. That’s what makes love so great. Don’t take them for granted because you never know how easily they can be gone.

Love, has to be one of the words in the English language that I hate the most. It’s become something that’s all too loosely used. People so easily express how much they ‘love’ something, but love is supposed to be the most intense emotion a person can feel, so why do we all throw it around like it’s nothing more than light hearted joy. Sometimes I feel that people often confuse what they like with love and worse still they confuse lust with love. It makes me wonder if any of us really know what it means to love, perhaps I am myself confused about love. Perhaps I have forgotten how it felt.

The common response to the question posed by all of us at some point, ‘how do you know when you’re in love?’ is that you just know and if you have to question it then it probably isn’t love at all. I know what I felt all those years ago for you, what I felt this time last year, that was love. I have no doubt whatsoever about it. It was simply the most intense thing I had ever felt. I wanted to spend every waking moment with you, I felt saddened every time a conversation ended. I felt a warmth that I’ve never felt before, I felt safe and comforted, I felt absolutely invincible, to the point where I watched my world collapse around me yet felt no pain because I had you and that was all that mattered.

I know that I don’t love you anymore, not like I used to. But what strikes me as strange is that I haven’t felt love like that, like what we had since. So the question lends itself to asking why I cannot love another like I loved you. Why can I not feel those intense feelings, the very ones that made each day as magical as they then seemed to be? Where have those intense emotions that made my heart leap from within my chest gone? When will I be able to love again? If I can at all.

Love is a lot like summer. We spend our days basking under the clear skies of a new found love. We soak up the sun as the days progressively get longer, laying in meadows with fingers tangled in each others traps and claws. We spend these days watching cascading clouds dance across the bright blue skies as the sun wraps us in a devine warmth. We walk into the distance as we stare in awe of each others eyes watching the reflection of the summer sunset in one another’s eyes. And when the sun does set we spend the few hours of darkness entwined in our passions, enslaved by an uncontrollable lust.

Like love we wish the summer never ends, we dread the days getting shorter. When the heat dissipates and we are overcome by a cold chill. But sadly every summer does end and so does every love. The days where I could hopelessly stare into your eyes for hours on end, have an end and so too do the days where we could fall asleep after watching the sunrise.

So fall draws in and everything around us begins to die. Sadly so too does this summer of love. And then the winter comes bringing with it a cold chill that blows over and freezes that heat our raging love and burning lust had once ignited. But you see a love may die, but the summer will come again and so too will a new love.