While He’s Here

Just more horrible news to top off my already funky mood. A friend from work told me today that one of our other coworkers is joining the military because he wants to work as a paramedic in less fortunate countries. He says he wants to do good in the world. He’s just that type of guy, you know, big heart, still believes in the good in people. He wants to make a difference.

I felt like I was going to cry when she told me. With the way the world is today, this news frightens me. I want him to be safe. True, bad can happen anywhere in the world, but he’ll be so far away. My chest hurts thinking about it. I wonder if my heart is breaking.

Maybe I’m what’s wrong with the world, believing that my friend’s presence would do a world more good here, where people like me need people like him. He has an optimism about him that’s contagious and uplifting. I think it’s because he has so much faith in God. Every day when I come in for the morning, he’s sitting down to breakfast and praying. It’s not something you see every day and I admire him for it. In a time where faith isn’t openly spoken about, especially not in the workplace, he stays true to his. I really think my heart is breaking.

A few months ago he and I were talking about my relationship with the Mister and he was saying how lucky he felt the Mister is for having been brought together with the kids and I. He says this is what he wants, to meet a woman who already has children, children he can be a father to. He says he would be happy to meet someone and fall in love and then have kids, the traditional way, but that he doesn’t deny he would be happier to come into a ready made family. I didn’t know what to do with that when he told me. I still don’t.

He and I chit chat in passing, sometimes we end up working together for the day, but not often. I know he enjoys motorcross racing, the adrenaline that comes with it. I know he’s not afraid of hurting himself in the sport. I thought he was crazy when I first learned this about him. I still think he’s crazy.

I feel horrible about not wanting my friend to go to countries that aren’t safe right now. I feel horrible that his words made me cry today. But mostly my chest aches with a tremendous heaviness because in a life with so many who come and go, I’m about to have another one leave and this news couldn’t have come at a worse time.

I still admire him for his bravery and for his big heart, his desire to do good. I’ll pray for him every night until I forget about him. I know that sounds horrible but in reality, he and I are not that close and as time goes on I will have forgotten these feelings I’m feeling right now. But that’s a long ways off, just like his departure, so for now I’ll appreciate his presence and his friendship and mostly I will pray for him.

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This Is How I Love You

Have I told you lately that I love you? Because I do. I love it that we share the passion for words. Words and mental images that only we can see but that we try our best to share with those we care for, those we’ve never met, with the world. Words that touch hearts, make minds ponder, inspire and comfort.

I love that we kind of favor each other, how my daughters giggle and ask me if you are my brother or my sister or my mother or my father, maybe a cousin? I love it how our eyes are the exact same shade of brown. I love it how your eyes are as green as a freshly mowed lawn in spring, shimmering with tears as bright as glistening dew in the early morning hours- tears from laughing so hard, from hurting so badly, from curiosity and wonder. I love the freckles that sprinkle your nose and cheeks- angel kisses is what I’ve been told they are sometimes called. I love how your hair falls in waves around your shoulders, down the curve of your back, to your waist. I adore how brave you are to keep it cut in such a trendy pixie style. If my face weren’t so round and my forehead quite so broad, I would want to attempt such a beautiful haircut. But on You, it looks as though you designed it, you were meant for it, this is Your style. It’s tailor-made for you.

I love how you’re so full of wonderment, always wanting to know more, never quite satisfied with the obvious, tried and true answers. I love your curiosity. I love that you are spontaneous, you live life moment to moment, not bothering to plan, going with the flow, going where the winds will take you. Your consistency is soothing. I love it that I don’t have to guess what you will do next. Patterns and routine are important for me and you always fulfill my expectations.

I love it that we share the same views. It’s nice to not have to argue my point in every conversation. It makes me feel not so alone. I admire how you research what you believe in. How you don’t back down and change your mind, even though we don’t share the same opinion. I love how you are passionate about your beliefs. I love how you don’t try to pressure me to agree with everything you say.

I love it that we listen to the same music and that I never feel pressured to change the station when we are riding in the car together. I love it that you share your different tastes in music with me. I’ve discovered some beautiful songs that I never thought I would enjoy, but you told me what they meant to you and I let the melody carry me away to the world you described.

I love it that you have your life so together. I love it that you allow me to see you fall apart. I love it that you know exactly where you are going in life and where you want to be. I love it that you are a Wandering Spirit, allowing the cosmos to take you where they may. I love it that you always have a Plan. I love it that you live Life moment to moment.

I love it that we are so much the same. I love it that we are so very different. I love You because you are a person, just like Me. I love you for who you are. I love you for who you aren’t. I love you unconditionally.

💖

Csilla

Your face reminds me of a woman I worked with many, many years ago. She was from Romania and her name was Csilla Csu. Csilla was pronounced “Chee-lah” like “Sheila,” only not. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Tall and curvy with long, dark hair and magnificent, blue eyes, her voice reminded me of the ocean’s waves lapping at the shore on a calm, summer morning.

Csilla didn’t speak much, her voice was soft and reminded me of wind chimes, but when she did speak, every word was beautiful. She told me often of how her son and husband were back in Romania and how much she missed them. She told me about life back home and how much she missed that as well. Sometimes I could see the sadness in her eyes, I couldn’t ever really hear it in her voice, her voice was like a symphony, a very soft symphony.

I somehow got into the habit of taking Csilla home after work. She was living with an older couple who were sponsoring her visit. She always said they were nice. I couldn’t imagine what she and this couple could have had in common. I wondered if it made Csilla feel even more lonely.

This story really has no point. Csilla didn’t change my life in some unimaginable way. We didn’t speak again after she went back home to Romania. For awhile, I searched for her on social media. I never found her. But your face, it reminds me of her.

Java

Java Hut to be exact. That was the name of the cafe. Maybe “Hut” had two T’s to be fancy, it’s been so long now that I cannot remember. It was a little cafe on what we called The Strip in a long line of smoke shops, an old theater that had tables and chairs instead of rows of fold down seats and served actual food and pitchers of soda instead of just junk. The pizzas were my favorite.

The Java Hut’s sodas were the best. They could add nearly any type of flavor to your Cola and I became partial to the vanilla syrup. The boy I was dating at the time got me started on dumping salted peanuts into my Coke as well. It added a nice touch. I remember wondering who introduced him to this, just like I wonder how all of my partners learn little things that they come to love and if I ever got them hooked on anything.

This guy I was dating at the time, the one who enlightened me to this theater and the joys of salted peanuts in my Coke, he decided one day to invite two of his friends, Justin and Jenna, along with us on a double date. Man, those two were a wreck. From the time I met them their relationship was turbulent, but they were both awkward and perfect for each other in their own way until Jenna became pregnant and Justin bailed on her.

Right before I met him I had started hanging out with a girl I had known since middle school and a friend of hers who was a year older. We thought we were so fancy sitting in a local coffee shop restaurant, smoking our Marlboros and caffeinating ourselves well past our curfews. The friend of my friend, her name was Rita, and I found ourselves in some trouble not long after and not to my surprise, while I was doing community service I ran into this guy I had only recently started dating. It felt like such a terrible thing to me that I was required to service my community because of one dumb mistake. Honestly, when I found out Jenna and Justin were going to have a baby at the ages of sixteen and fifteen, i felt a lot better about my community service.

Dysfunction is what held our friendships and relationships together back then and I can’t say I was sad to hear a year ago that the Java Hutt had closed down some time ago. While the memories of the time spent there were pleasant enough, I know they were empty just as the relationships were, just as the building of the old Java Hutt probably still is.

Lost

Wearing a pair of earrings that were given to me today at work as a Saint Patrick’s Day gift and with the nails on my left hand done up pretty with glittery polish, I admire my makeup job in the mirror and tell myself this is the kind of woman I am. I’ve been angry for the past couple of days, feeing neglected even though it’s far from the truth. I need attention but I want to be left alone. This is how I get.

I blame it on all of the toxic relationships I’ve had in the past when pain was synonymous with love and I didn’t know how to function without it. Sometimes life feels a bit off kilter if I’m hurting, if I’m not anxious, if I’m afraid and it bothers me that none of this bothers me.

So many mornings and afternoons I’m more complacent sitting in my car reading or journaling instead of making connections with people whose attitudes and behaviors I perceive to be fake. At my age I would just as soon be left alone. I have no circle and I can’t say this upsets me. Sure there’s people whose company I enjoy more than others, people whom I would never tell to piss off should they sit down beside me and begin to ramble senselessly about their day, their life, as so often happens. But I want something more.

I want to meet someone whose passion for the ocean is as strong as mine, someone who loves to stand in the darkness and watch the stars. People who truly adore these things and not just say they do. I want to meet someone who always seems to gravitate to pen and paper when the spoken word just won’t do. Someone who, like me, stops what they’re doing frequently to jot down that thought they just had with the intentions of expanding on it later in private instead of rambling it off to whoever may be nearby. I want to meet someone who had the same passion for words as I do but whom also finds themselves at a loss often, just like me.

But there’s not many others like me. None that I have met in person at least. Would it be vain of me to say that I have one of those personalities that makes others want to imitate it? Because it’s true. I seem to attract people who suddenly take up journaling and reading and extended periods of silence once they’ve spent a bit of time with me. It never really lasts for very long, their true personality comes out eventually and I hate to say but it disappoints me. It’s nice to think there’s someone else in the world who is like me, someone who understands me, but it just never lasts.

Scrawled With Love: March 14, 2017

Dear Friend,

I’ve thought about you for many days in a row now. I kept telling myself that I would sit down and write you out a quick note, just a small “Hey, hi, hello” to remind you that you are always in my thoughts, but I never quite got around to it. The timing just never seemed right. This is what I told myself anyways.

The more I thought about it, the more I told myself that the thought of sending you mail, a note from a stranger to another stranger, was absolutely absurd. I wondered if it would seem peculiar to you that I would think of you fondly enough to pick out a cute, humourous, touching card and scribble out a few lines. Would you find it awkward that I included some childish stickers inside? We hardly know each other, but your words have come to find such a special place in my life. But would this be enough to justify some Love Mail? I worried that it wouldn’t, so I refrained.

Sometimes things happen during my day and I want to share them with you, but not on a page of my blog where hundreds of other eyes skim over my words. I want to know about your day as well, what you’ve been up to, what made you smile, laugh, cry, worry, ache. I want to snuggle up in my bed, warm and safe underneath the covers and read your words. I want to have a special place and time where all I do is read your words. It would be my safe place.

That’s what your words do. They make me feel safe. They allow me to experience joy, sorrow, worry, anxiety, triumph, admiration, happiness- I experience so much through your words, in the privacy of my safe place, privately. I would much rather be there with you, as a friend, and hold your hand throughout your journey, but I know this isn’t possible. So I walk next to you, through your words. A million miles away, but near you nonetheless.

Sometimes I want to send you some things that I like, to remind you of me, remind you that I am thinking of you. Maybe a tin of my favorite tea, something that you collect that popped out to me the last time I ran to the store to pick up milk and eggs, a quilt you could wrap yourself in on the couch when the days just become to be too much. But my anxiety always stops me. How am I supposed to know what would be out of your comfort zone, and if I asked you, how could I trust that you weren’t just agreeing to appease me? And so I just don’t send anything at all.

But there always comes a time later on, when I realize that I should’ve trusted my big heart. I should’ve sent that card, that note, that care package. I should’ve reached out and reminded you that you are loved, even when in reality we hardly know each other. For now, I will turn to these pages to remind you.

You are loved. 💖

Starlight

And if I asked you to meet me on the beach, with the moon so high above us, would you go the distance to stand with me underneath the stars, our toes in the sand, my hand in yours, even if for only one night? Would you shrink away from me if I told you that there’s something about you that sets my soul on fire like I’ve found something precious to me that I thought I had lost long ago?

If I texted you at three in the morning and asked you what you were thinking in that exact moment, would you ignore my message and later tell me you had gotten busy or had been asleep and had forgotten to respond? Or would you call me and let me hear your voice, tell me what you remembered from the dreams you had while I was trying to chase away my own nightmares? Would you stay awake with me and hum me a lullaby until I stopped whispering and my breathing became even or would you tell me you had to be up very early and promise to chat some other time?

And what about those moments when it all becomes too much for me? Would you tell me to get over it, that I’ve said it all before and that things never change? Would you tell me things aren’t as bad as they seem? Or would you wrap your arm around me, let me lean on you, paint me a new world with one of your beautiful stories? Would you light the way through the darkness like a star so bright I can’t help but wish upon it every time I see it?

Discovery

What would I even write about if I could find the words? Everything has been said before. I can’t bring myself to write about the things in my head, the things that are true. Well, true to me at least.

How could I tell you about the jealousy I feel over things from the past? The hate and loathing and shame and pain. How could I write you a fairy tale when I’ve lived through a thousand nightmares? Where would I even begin?

If given the chance would you sift through my journal and try to decipher the broken words where I have torn through the page with my pen or better yet, the half pages and bits of pages that I destroyed once the pain gave way to rage? Would you read my words and think to yourself, “Man this woman needs help.” Or would my words stir something in your chest and make you realize that maybe we are not so different afterall?

Would my words make you cringe, would you think to yourself, “Maybe she was having a bad day…” Would you convince yourself that the smile that you sometimes see elsewhere is more than just skin deep? Would you make yourself believe my life is perfect or as close to it as possible?

If I could make myself write about how often I want to run away and hide, away from everyone who loves me because I don’t know how to cope with love unless it hurts would you shake your head in pity, would you tell yourself, “I hope one day she finds the happiness she deserves, one day I hope she realizes how loved she is”? Or would you think that I am only being dramatic, making these things up, making them out to seem worse than they really are?

If you read the words I write when I’m alone and can’t stop- can’t stop my mind, the tears, the rage, can’t stop anything- would you reach out and tell me “I am here”? Would you check up on me and tell me tidbits about yourself, ask me about myself, make an effort to find out what makes me tick? Or you would skim over what I’ve written and chalk it off to a bad day?

Once my words have torn your heart apart will you still want to read more? Will you turn every page, anxious to see how I pulled myself through this breakdown, through that obstacle, through the anxiety? Will you observe me from afar and tell yourself that you’ll just keep an eye on me until I’ve seemed to snap out of it, until I’ve seemed to just get over it?

And what about when you see that it’s always like this, well mostly almost always. Would you still open that email, visit my page, thumb through my journal? Would you still want to know what happens next?