The leaves have started to get crunchy again.
It’s that time of year when stepping outside is almost magical. It’s a nostalgic time a year, a time I tend to look back on and reminisce about where I was this time last year. How much have I changed? Have I grown? Have I become a smarter woman? Am I turning into the woman I want to be?
As I walked into my hallway earlier this evening, I smelled something. A familiar smell that was neither good nor bad. It smelled like his house. The house I used to walk around barefoot in, wrapped up in a gigantic sweatshirt that wasn’t my own, waiting on him to pour me a bowel of cereal so we could discuss politics and music.
I smelled it this evening and it made me stop in my tracks. That frangrance made me wonder, was it my dishes? Did I need to clean? Perhaps it’s the old musty house smell combined with the two months I’ve been living in it.
My reaction was neither of nostalgia or regret. I didn’t miss it, but I didn’t hate it. I miss the fact that we’re so far apart, that friends must be separated over time. Eventually we all grow up and eventually we all scatter. People find jobs, find spouses, find homes. My best friend will get married one day, and someday I’ll join that club of grown up people. My boyfriend’s made it, or at least, I believe he has.
When do we grow up?
Is it the moment we accept our first job in a far away state? When we move out and pay our bills and buy that first bottle of wine to finish on a lonely weekday after the nine-to-five? Is it when we have a mortgage, take out a loan or buy a car?
I don’t know when I’ll grow up. Standing in the hall today, I realized I still have a while to go.
I’m ok with that.
“Well, what can I do? How can I help?”
“You can make sure you get it right, no matter who it’s with,” he said. “Be sure that you love him- whoever he is- so much, so truly, that there are no cracks and gaps in your heart where someone else can sneak in. Work hard every day to keep it like that. Pray to God every night not to let it happen. Just get it right.”
Never before had she missed someone like she missed him.
He wasn’t her lover and he wasn’t her significant other. Yet, he was the person who in times of need, she relied on. On the night when someone held onto her and didn’t let her move, forced her to feel the heat of his skin against hers, his warm smile erased the pain she felt. And even now, when the trials of life became too much, it was his laughter and humor that comforted her.
Life is a slow passing of time in which every moment matters, and every moment she ignores is a moment lost.
As much as she wishes to be home, having coffee with the one person who knows her, wishing her time away is truly a waste. This moment, this opportunity is very much so a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The traffic on the way to work is usual, yet she savors those moments when she can reflect on the morning, with the cool breeze kissing her face. Morning disc jockeys jest with each other on the airwaves, and her roommates dance their stress away.
Life is truly beautiful, she thinks to herself as she stares at the rising cost of gas.
In three week she will have coffee with him and reflect on their time apart. In three and a half weeks she be wishing her time away, looking forward to the place she’s come to call home.
Of course she misses him, but she’s beginning to wonder what she will miss more:
A place that offers her everything she’s wanted in life or the person that knows everything she wants out of life.
I wasn’t lying when I said I had cried.
Tears are something reserved only for those rare occasions wherein no other forms of expression suffice. There are no words to describe that moment when you realize that everything you’ve built up and all that you’ve come to believe is a complete and utter lie.
Perhaps that’s where the tears came from; that small part of myself I had hidden away and locked in a part of myself I reveal to no one else.
As I lied in my bunk, my tear-streaked face reflecting the city lights from outside, my roommate walked slowly into the room. She presumed I was asleep. Be it out of fear of loneliness or be it the need to connect (and in the end, are they not the same?) I rolled over and allowed myself to be seen.
She knew. Without words being spoken, she knew.
“He hurt you, didn’t he?” she asked me from below. I slowly sat up, wiped away my tears and smiled.
I had no reason to be crying, I thought. I was living a fantasy and now, finally, I could come down and discover my surroundings. At last, I could see through it all. This dream was a reality and I was living it. No boy is worth my tears. Unless they are tears of joy, my lips shouldn’t recognize the taste of salt that comes from my eyes.
“No,” I laughed. “I let it happen, but it’s okay now.”
I wasn’t lying when I said I had cried, and while those tears were a production of pain and resentment, the sunny skies of California have a peculiar way of clearing those clouds away.