I still vividly remember the last time I saw him.
We were standing down by the river, at the little dock where we’d spent most of the summer. It was late August and the sun was still high, but there was a chill in the air where it brushed my neck. Or maybe it was just the words he spoke that gave me goosebumps.
“You know I have to leave soon, right?” He said, looking into my eyes.
I felt his hands, large and warm on my shoulders. His breath smelled of clove cigarettes and the stolen beer we’d shared.
“Yeah,” I said, willing the tears to stay back. I didn’t want to ruin what felt like an important moment.
He sighed, and looked off behind my right shoulder. I looked at my feet, red toenail polish chipped and worn.
“It was a good summer,” he said, almost absently.
This time, it was I who sighed. He drew me against him and I lay my cheek on his chest. His heart beat steady and I timed my breathing to his. Closing my eyes, I inhaled the scent of him. Warm and salty. My arms wrapped around his waist.
I didn’t ever want the moment to end, but at some point, he pulled away. I looked up into his eyes.
I wanted to say something profound. I wanted to tell him how much he meant to me…his friendship, his support. I wanted him to know how important he was to me, and how my feelings had evolved and changed over the last few weeks.
Oh how I wanted to kiss him.
But instead, I just smiled at him. “Any more beer left?” I asked, reaching compulsively for the safety of ‘just friends.’ I wanted to shout from the dock and out across the water how much I felt for him, how deeply I needed him….but yet, I didn’t want to risk losing him. His friendship was what he offered and I accepted. To ask for more would have been greedy.
We sat on the dock and watched the sun set, sharing a beer and talking of the inconsequentials.
Before long the mosquitoes came out and the frogs began their nightly chanting. “I should get going,” he said, standing up and offering me his hand. “Nice day today. I’m glad we came out here.”
I tried so hard not to read into his words. It had been a nice day. I wouldn’t let myself ruin it by getting serious and emotional. Later, I would cry myself to sleep with longing for him. Now, however, I would be the friend-buddy-pal that had become my role in this lopsided relationship.
He walked me to my car. We held hands as we navigated the trail back up from the dock. Did he feel the shock and thrill that I did when our hands met? He walked a little ahead of me and I studied his shoulders as he moved, the muscles just beneath the skin of his back. I wanted to touch them, to rub my palms across the flat of his back and rake my nails down his spine. I wondered what his skin tasted like.
Instead, I got my carkeys out of my front pocket and hit the automatic unlock button on the remote. “Here we are,” I said. “Got any plans for tomorrow?” I asked, praying I sounded casual. Maybe I’d tell him tomorrow.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”
I shrugged. “Ok then, maybe I’ll talk to you then.”
I got in my car and started it up. “Drive careful,” he said.
“I always do,” I replied.
I saw him from my rearview window. He had turned and was looking back over across the river. Eventually he got smaller in the distance until I couldn’t distinguish him anymore.
I drove home slowly, the windows down to let in the damp August air.
Tomorrow, I promised myself. I would tell him tomorrow once and for all how I felt about him.
His hands were hot on my hips and I instinctively leaned back into him. His breath came closer to my neck…
My lips parted, a sigh escaped me. The flutter of his breathing caressed my neck…
and suddenly, there was a loud banging on the door. “Hey! Hurry it up in there!” a man’s voice shouted.
We jumped apart as if we’d been shocked, looking guiltily into each others’ eyes.
“I should go,” he said. “I…well, I’ll talk to you in a bit.”
He left the bathroom quickly, closing the door behind him. I heard the man on the other side of the door groan in frustration as I turned the lock.
I leaned on the sink and looked at my face. I was flushed across my cheeks and down my neck. My low-neck T-shirt showed pinkened skin across the tops of my breasts. I sprinkled some cool water on my face and chest, trying to catch my breath.
This was a mistake, I decided. It was time to go. I should have never came.
Resignedly, I opened the bathroom door and the sound of the party and the music hit me like a wall. I felt a throb beginning in my left temple.
I began to weave my way through small groups of two and three people, realizing that more people must have come in while I was in the bathroom.
I was almost to the door when I heard Julie’s voice. “Can I have everyones attention? Hello! Can anyone hear me?”
I didn’t want to turn around but I was compelled. Julie had dragged a coffee table into the center of the dance area and was standing on it, clapping her hands for quiet. Soon all eyes were focused on her.
“I want to thank you all for coming,” she began, smiling with her collagen-enhanced lips. “This party wouldn’t have been possible without each and every one of you. But most of all,” she said, turning doe eyes on him. “It wouldn’t have been possible without the love of my life.” People began to clap and Julie reached her hand out to him. “Happy birthday honey.” She said, taking his hand “I love you so much.” Julie threw her arms around him and that was about as much as I could handle.
I turned to the door and walked out.
I’d had to park in the street several houses down. The house was well lit but the street wasn’t, and I walked slowly, trying not to loose my footing in the uneven grade.
I could just make out the shape of my truck when I heard footsteps behind me.
I turned expectantly, thinking this was sounding more and more like some cheesy teen romance novel.
It was him, of course.
“Weren’t you going to say goodby?” He said, panting a little as he caught up.
I shook my head, not trusting my voice. I didn’t want him to hear a wobble.
“Why not?” He asked, taking me by the upper arms and turning me to face him.
The moon was full, and I could just see the sparkle in his eyes.
Damn, I thought.
“You have Julie in there, pledging her love and throwing this whole party for you. You don’t need me in there to screw it up.” I tried to sound calm and reasonable but I thought I probably sounded whiney. Oh well, in for a penny, in for a pound. “Besides, she made it perfectly clear how you feel.”
He looked at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I used to mean something to you.”
He looked at me silently, and I felt he was sizing me up. “Do you really believe that?” He asked me quietly. I didn’t answer and he continued, his hands gripping my arms harder. “What else could I tell her? She knew that we had a thing once.”
“A thing?” I interrupted, starting to lose my temper. “Is that all it was? A thing?”
“Oh come on,” he said. “You know it was more than that. You and I …we have that connection. I don’t know how to describe it.”
I nodded. “But what about now?” I asked softly. “All those emails and late-night phone calls…what am I supposed to believe when I came here to see you and instead watched your pet barbie-doll fawn all over you?” I turned to continue walking to my truck. “This was a mistake. It was all one big mistake.”
The tears were falling now and I hoped he didn’t hear it in my voice.
“Please,” he said. “Can I explain?”
I didn’t answer, just kept walking to my truck. When I got in, I saw him from my rearview mirror, still standing in the middle of the road, looking at me helplessly. I gunned the engine and popped the clutch. Tomorrow I would take the first flight out.
The ache, the need, the desire…
I find myself nearly clawing at the air, gasping for breath until I can breathe no more.
I ache to get away, to find myself elsewhere when I awake in the morning.
I crave, I crush, I hunger, I dream…
Thoughts of great beyonds and far away horizons,
great adventures and flying through time…
I wish I want I wish
The freedoms of childhood, so far behind me now yet,
somewhere before me lying tantalizingly golden in the setting sun.
My Peter Pan has flown away,
my Superman retired his cape and my
very own personal savior has changed
into someone I think I knew once long ago,
when I was very young…
So the summer flew by and we are facing labor day already.
::sigh…::
I cleaned out my garden this week, pulling the bits of grass and debris that took root, and trimming off the flowerheads that had seen better days. I found a rogue sunflower in the middle of it all, and realized that citronella REALLY likes to grow there.
Kind of sad, getting a garden ready for bed. There are still blooms to open of course, and my asters haven’t even started yet; but still, there is no sign of the tulips and daffodils that are sleeping beneath the warm earth, and I had to cut back my bleeding heart (finally). I left it up until the spiders that are born there every year had taken flight to their own homes.
Tank tops and shorts are soon to be replaced by fresh and crisp school clothes.
Alarms will have to be set again.
The neighborhood will be come strangely quiet at 7am, and will remain so until almost 3 pm…five days a week!
I used to look forward to this time of year when my kids were little…when I’d just about reached my limit of the bickering and bothering that brothers and sisters do.
(One year, one of the moms gave the bus driver gourmet cookies on the first day, to thank him for taking our lovely children away.)
Now however, when my life is more clearly able to be measured in seasons, I feel my own autumn beginning in my bones, and it makes it sad to see it reflected in the garden.
My hair has gone from blonde to brown, and now carries the hints of grey. Crow’s feet have settled into the corners of my eyes, and I have to tell myself “they are smile lines” more often than I used to.
Joints ache on those cool early mornings and I find myself oftentimes going to bed before my children.
Yes, autumn is coming to my garden soon.
My flowers are sprouted and grown, and ready to spread their petals to the sun.
And I am ready to remain, to root myself into the Mother Earth, to smile and nod over the newer sprouts, and to slumber under the earth when the weather becomes too chill.
After all, spring does come again..that is part of the promise.
And I will dance in Summerland with hair once again blonde.
I am reading a book called “The Lost Girls” by Laurie Fox and it basically chronicles the lives of Wendy Darling, her daughter Jane, Jane’s daughter Margaret, and Margaret’s daughter Wendy. (Yes those Darlings, of Peter Pan fame). The story is told by Wendy the younger. I am particularly impressed by something Wendy says, when talking about her boyfriend:
The theme in the book (so far, I am only just on page 82) revolves around men and boys, and growing up and letting go of childhood notions. It explores Wendy’s attempt to separate herself from her deep love of Peter Pan, her sense of abandonment when he does not return for her to do his Spring cleaning, and her travails as she grows up with the shadowy memories of Neverland in her dreams.
I am particularly impressed with a statement Wendy makes about her boyfriend: “I was a girl with a boyfriend who would love her till the cows came home, but who was not coming home with the cows himself”
The book seems to touch a lot on unrequited love. Not the kind of love where you crush on someone and it’s gone, but the deep kind of love that you know is real and true…..and that you sense in the other person but the other person cannot return that love to you.
True and real, unrequited love.
The tragedy and the heartbreak is tempered with the giddiness of the ‘what if’ and the total mixed messages received from the object of affection.
Is it possible to be in love with someone who does not or can not (or simply will not) love you in return? Or loves you in a different way than you love him or her?
Is it love if its one sided?
And if you pine, moon, cry or whatever dramatic way you deal with it….is it still love? Or is it a crush?
Is it really possible to love someone so much, that even when they don’t love you back, you still wish them happiness? Don’t you want to just jump on their back as they walk away from you, and grab onto them, and hold them until they admit the same feelings for you? (Or at least until you’ve humiliated yourself enough to let them go?)
Or do you let them go and find happiness in your tears of goodbye?
And on that note…
do you ever forget the person you’ve truly loved? Do you hold a fondness for them? A sadness? Or does it just wither up and blow away, dust in the wind and all that? Are your long-term feelings tempered by the feelings they had for you?
Your acts of unwitting hurtfulness
hurt nonetheless.
The fact that you don’t see what you are doing as painful to others
hurts me again and again.
I cannot speak to you of anything
unless you want to speak of it;
you run from the slightest whisper
of words you don’t want to hear.
And then to find you again
I must wait until you come back.
How much tread can a heart take?
How many beatings til it finally breaks?
I try to live life in a way that I have no regrets but
sometimes they creep up anyway.
There are things I regret, and I can’t escape that
nor blame it on youth, or ignorance.
Things I would change if I could,
People I would un-hurt
and others to whom I would dare to speak my mind.
There is no going back and words once said
cannot be un-said.
I must continue to move forward,
hoping that I learn from each mistake
and hoping that in the future
I can live of life of no regret.
*
I might be just doing anything when I feel it. That sneaky crawl of goosebumps up the back of my neck to the crown of my head.
I turn quickly, expecting someone behind me, yet no one is there.
My heart speeds up, I get a clench in my stomach.
I feel it. I feel someone.
Where are you?
WHO are you?
Butterflies begin to dance in my stomach and my heart knocks in my chest.
I feel it again.
The caress of your thoughts.
The phone doesn’t ring.
There is no new email.
No one is at the front door.
Where are you?
You cannot be in my mind only
I cannot imagine this sudden
overwhelming
touch.
This
caress of thoughts.
You came to me in my dreams last night
my love
my life
my loss.
Held me thru the darkest hours
Your words a soothing balm
the fragments of thought but a memory now.
Your arms around my waist.
I swam in the sea of your eyes again,
Drowned blissfully in the waves of your love.
Brief though it was
it will have to sustain me;
Dark nights of the soul, and all that…
You lit up my dream and reminded me
of all in my life I lack…
my love
my life
my loss.
Today my thoughts turn again to that mysterious state of being, love.
I have a friend who recently ended a long-term relationship and we discussed the pitfalls of falling in love too early, and how easy it is to confuse those infatuated butterflies with the real-deal, true-blue love that everyone is searching for.
I started wondering if love is a constant state of being or if it can really come and go. Can you really ever stop loving someone, after having given your heart to them?
*
Isn’t there always some sort of connection that comes into being after two people, for whatever length of time, declare mutual love and affection to each other? And if they stop being a couple, do those feelings just vanish? Can they vanish? If those feelings vanish, then was it really love?
Is there a corner of the heart somewhere that is dedicated to the loves we have experienced, the arms that have surrounded us, the person that cherished us if only briefly?
*
There are certainly situations where love is withdrawn. Abuse, neglect, maltreatment….those types of situations will take what may have blossomed into love and tromp it down to dust.
But that is not what I am referring to in this post.
I am speaking of a relationship that is more or less ‘healthy.’
It could be romantic.
It could be familial.
It could be a friendship.
Does the love just end if the relationship ends?
*
My own experiences are that it doesn’t truly go away. How can it? Love is created and grows. It can’t just disappear. I hold a place for all those that I have loved, regardless of the endings.
*
What do you think? Does it die, does it fade, does it glow? Does love ever really go away?
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