"Write hard and clear about what hurts." - Earnest Hemmingway.
OK
I'm taking that advice; well, we shall see about the clear part.
I met a man a little over a year ago. He was like all other men to me at that time. A cursory assessment of him left me with the impression that he was uninterestingly self absorbed, not particularly attractive, followed by a troupe of admiring women, and all other males had a story about how he was kind of a douchebag. To be honest, I didn't even notice him the first time we coincidentally were at the same local hangout on the "island" of lost boys. In a very literal sense, I didn't see him coming.
I can recall, and could recount, every moment we spent together. But I will not, those banal details are not interesting to you, and keeping them secret is my way of marking their importance to me.
The story here is so much more about the journey I am on through life and the lessons this "beautiful, tragic love affair" (thanks t-swizzle) has taught me. By nature, I am a guarded, closed off person. For practical reasons. I know that relationships almost always end. If they are going to end, I don't want to get my heart involved. It is small and fragile, breaks easily and heals slowly, so I give it away stingily, and pray that the recipient wants to keep it forever when I do give it. I over-analyze situations that I find myself in, what possible end can this particular path have and what are the odds that it will be at least 51% favorable for me.
I felt a sweetness about him from the very start. Not cloyingly sweet or surface sweet and then bitter underneath. It was a deep and easy sweetness that may not sound like a big deal, but is unique in my life. I still feel it. Not that it has been very long. But music and dance and moments fill my mind and heart with the sweet feeling and a hope to see him again that will not be fulfilled. And my heart breaks again.
Looking back over those first few months where we barely interacted for only moments at a time during my infrequent visits, I can see the frisson filled anticipation with which I looked forward to the possibility of catching a glimpse of him and exchanging a few words and sharing a furtive glance or ten. I didn't mean to be deceitful, I really didn't think of him that way out loud...but the brain is sometimes slow in catching up with the heart...especially when the two of them have developed a mutual distrust for each other such as mine have. With a touch, a look, a sentence, he secretly tethered himself to me. He placed strings on and through my heart and held them in his hand. So slight were these silken threads that he sewed through my heart that I didn't even notice them there. They were thin and ethereal so that in the end the sinew that would properly hold my heart together had been most certainly completely replaced by them. My heart was no longer encased by its own watery membrane, but a blanket that he had woven and thrown over it, likely without knowing or intending to do just that. Maybe just out of curiosity to see what would happen.
And then one night, as Johnny Rzeznik would sing, "Like a lightning bolt to the heart, you woke me up." He shocked my heart with a jolt so that it now beat with a rhythm that was entirely his own. Nearly a year later, when he removed the pacemaker, I felt the pain of complete cardiac arrest as my heart temporarily stopped beating at all. It wasn't exactly love at first sight, but it was love at first real sight, like the light came on and I saw him, and not the him I had pretended I thought he was so I could hide from what was fomenting underneath my feigned disdain. Maybe it was the full moon, maybe it was all those mosquitos, or the firelight, or the way he willingly let us take care of him instead of acting like the big man who doesn't need any help. It was probably the music that filled the night air, and the way he looked at me like he could see my soul, and the way he shared his fears and stories and pain and thanked me for all of it. It was certainly the way he held my hand in his bigger,stronger hand, and the way he held me in his arms tight against his chest like he never wanted to let me go.
My heart woke up from its decade long winter of unfeeling and my brain sat straight up, took notice, shook itself "no" in its cranium and told heart, "Run, Baby, Run." My heart, aware that this "sliding doors" affair had 99.9% chance of ending in disaster, decided to sit and stay and bask in the warmth of the sun that beamed from his eyes and enjoy the cool breeze that he whispered across me. The perfect beauty of the summer that I was now enjoying was worth the guarantee that one of these summer days would bring my heart a category 5 hurricane that made any winter chill feel like child's play. Instead of carefully removing the strings I was now aware were binding us together, and packing up my heart, and slowly backing to a distance where I knew I would be safe, I stayed and let him continue to establish his ties to me..."apprivoise-moi. Mais si tu m'apprivoises, ma vie sera comme ensoleillée." So I gave him my wild heart and asked him to tame it, because I wanted to. That was the choice I made. The heart choice, over the smart choice. (Where were the christians from "shoot christians say" to remind me to bounce my eyes and guard my heart?)
I've always loved The Little Prince by Antoine de St-Exupery, and my favorite character has always been le renard (the fox). The interactions between le petit prince and le renard were to me the libretto of our little relationship.
“S’il te plaît… apprivoise-moi!” dit-il.
“Je veux bien,” répondit le petit prince, “mais je n’ai pas beaucoup de temps. J’ai des amis à découvrir et beaucoup de choses à connaitre.”
“On ne connaît que les choses que l’on apprivoise,” dit le renard. “Les hommes n’ont plus le temps de rien connaître. Ils achètent des choses toutes faites chez les marchands. Mais comme il n’existe point de marchands d’amis, les hommes n’ont plus d’amis. Si tu veux un ami, apprivoise-moi!”
He had a rose, because there's always a rose. If there's a fox, there's always a rose. A rose who must be returned to because she needs his sunlight and water and protection and her importance is preeminent because of the time he has already spent on her.
“C’est le temps que tu as perdu pour ta rose qui fait ta rose si importante.”
So he said he had to leave this planet and return to his. And I cried. "Don't cry over me" ... "It hurts me too" ...He said, and a million other things that couldn't make it better. How could he look at me, touch me, say those things to me that way and not really care. "I do care" ...not enough... "I just need to do what's best for me"... which was evidently not me... "You always knew this day was coming" And with that he obliterated my heart. He tugged on all those strings and tore chunks of cardiac muscle right out of my chest. While, admittedly, this is hyperbolic figurative language, it is also completely true. My heart physically hurts. It is crazy and true and largely the reason why my brain doesn't like to allow the heart to make the decisions.
Ainsi le petit prince apprivoisa le renard. Et quand l’heure du départ fut proche:
—Ah! dit le renard… Je pleurerai.
—C’est ta faute, dit le petit prince, je ne te souhaitais point de mal, mais tu as voulu que je t’apprivoise…
—Bien sûr, dit le renard.
—Mais tu vas pleurer ! dit le petit prince.
—Bien sûr, dit le renard.
—Alors tu n’y gagnes rien !
—J’y gagne, dit le renard, à cause de la couleur du blé.
I can't be angry with him. Even in my heartbreak there is no bitterness, and I think eventually I will be able to look back and smile at our moments our secrets our closeness our shared joy. I will remember the way a huge uncontainable grin would break across his face when he saw me, you can't fake nor can you fetter emotion like that, and it's how I know it was real for him too. I will remember the slow, heavy, bass drum kick of his heart inside his chest...steady regardless of the situation...I could just have leaned against him and listened to it reassuring me for hours. When your mom has open heart surgery to replace her mitral valve when you are young, you develop a habit of listening for and memorizing the sound of people's hearts in their chests. Some of them have a sound that resonates into your life and harmonizes with your own. His was just right to my ears. I will look back and laugh at all the faux pas like calling my eyes gray and my hair brunette (because it wasn't the summer just yet and honey blonde isn't legit bleach blonde) and basically calling me fat (which he certainly didn't mean, but mumbles had a way of sticking his foot straight in it). One day it won't hurt, the words won't feel like daggers. Eventually I will be able to be glad for being able to let go and love and be grateful to him for being the object of that affection. Eventually I will be able to appreciate the "color of the wheat" even though he was not the one. After a time I will stop wishing that he would come back and choose me.
But I have learned that this is the condition of being human, we need dark to contrast the light, we will have pain and you can't avoid pain so you might as well risk a certain kind of pain and have something sweet along the way...because who knows, it might just work out...and what's the worst that could happen? Heartbreak. And then mend...and maybe even love again.
One last word from that crazy, wise, French pilot: "Bien sûr je te ferai mal. Bien sûr tu me feras mal. Bien sûr nous aurons mal. Mais ça, c’est la condition de l’existence. Se faire printemps, c’est prendre le risque de l’hiver. Se faire présent, c’est prendre le risque de l’absence… C’est à mon risque de peine que je connais ma joie."
For now, if everyone could stop parking those idiotic dinosaurs in the parking lots at Publix and Starbucks and Tacolu...I'd really appreciate it.
