Let the magic exist, expend your imagination for this scene. If you haven’t seen Stardust, all you need to know is Claire Danes is a fallen star and she loves the mouse (who is actually a man under a spell). Add the mystery of what love is and this may just be one of my favorite monologues:
If only I could say something like that, or even just write it! Hollywood trumps me!
Being healthy stems from being able to heal. An ambitious endeavor that is pursued for various reasons depending on each person’s heart. For me, healing is directly tied to my past. Regret is more than a nagging reminder, it is an entity that keeps me awake a night, a pulling feeling that fills me with flashbacks and remorse. Sometimes making me desperate enough to not sleep for fear of the impending dreams. Guilt lies at the foundation of all my regrets, all of which are voiced over by a judging inner monologue. The soundtrack to my love life is accustomed to coming to abrupt halts.
Keeping up the music metaphor I have to say my romantic life no longer sounds as it used to. The predictable nature of the 4 month curse is on pause. I suppose I am experiencing something unheard of in my timeline of relationships. A side effect that I credit to finally entering a relationship with a heart as close to whole as possible. Always healing and forgiving myself I don’t dare claim I have found the cure to my regret. However, to an extent I have found something more worthy of my thoughts.
Unable to put the exact change or feeling into words I will simply describe a moment. Pardon me now for any level of cheesiness this recollection may inspire, but as I am becoming more fond of the realty that cliches have meaning, listen up.
Moments of clarity are few and far between, expecially in my life where I refuse to trust my gut and triple guess every thought that cascades through my mind. Lately, and I know the feeling as it has occured a couple of times in my past, I have had passing seconds of blank comfort. I will label these “dandelions” as they call to mind the moment you blow on the flower and everything just feels peaceful. I am not accustomed to sudden sensations of reclining emotion, giving in to the essence of the moment and not demanding answers to a million questions. But these dandelion moments continue to appear, fleeting seconds where the need to label feelings disappear and I can enjoy just how happy I really am. The writer in me instinctively wants words to match my every emotion, but in these seconds that is impossible. Unlike most times this lack of description does not anger or frustrate me, I accept it silently and spend more time escaping into the new feeling. The security that comes with blank joy. The simplest contentment that doesn’t always last but while it does has a way of putting priorities in perspective and making you appreciate. And then the moment is gone. I am slowly getting greedy, wanting to feel it more and more. But for now will dwell in the gratitude of feeling like a dandelion half a dozen times in my life. Maybe less.
It’s a good feeling to have back. Maybe magic really doesn’t get lost after childhood. Or maybe it does, and if you’re really lucky it will find its way back to you. Even if just for a few fleeting seconds.
Click above link to check out a fantastic blogger and Austen fan discuss my mission to understand love!
They must call it the game of love for a reason. If falling in love is supposed to be full of laughs and smiles, these capture those moments. That, or, we are all doomed- love doesn’t exist.
“I got marbles in my mouth
Thousand words I wanna say but it’s impossible to spit em out
I can barely make a sound”
I am not normally the type to admit defeat when it comes to expressing emotion. Even more, I am not the one who is every short on words. I am an over thinker through and through, as such I tend to say what’s on my mind and then repeat it endlessly. Word vomit could be my middle name. But not this time, and for some reason I am starting to think this new urge to hold things in could be a good thing. Or I could wind up spitting on someone when I self combust from containing it all.
I will need to make a pro/con list for suppressing emotions.
This morning did not go as planned, but thinking about it I never value the days that do. It is only when the unexpected wobbles life off balance that anyone, me in particular, makes an effort to find perspective. And with a voice constantly searching for meaning I sometimes find myself thriving the most in the unanticipated. This was only slightly the case today.
I woke up with plans to take my father to the airport. An agenda set in motion months ago and after much health delay finally appeared as if it would happen. We would arrive early, he would board the plane, and at last, months prolonged, meet his grandson. On the other end of the runway my sister, the new mother, would be eager and prepared to introduce the two important men in her life. Unfortunately health never seems to agree with flight schedules or predetermined plans. So instead of waiting for him to land I am sitting and waiting to hear from the doctor. Over three months ago, when all the heart worries and out of sync rhythms began I was able to keep it together. We were in a hospital room with constant attention for a week, and while everything was out of my hands their capable efforts eased my fears. They would fix him and we would move on. Today reminds me of a lot of things, especially the winter holiday spent in a hospital room, but mostly of love.
When I was really little I thought by the time I was old enough I would somehow marry a man just like my father. A little girl’s idea of what love is taught to her by her best friend and father. I wanted to be as lucky as my mother and part of me knows this notion faded. The only man I have ever known who has accepted all my failures and continued to push me, never once finding a flaw and abandoning me as broken. He listened, even when I had nothing to say. And encouraged every passion I expressed a second of interest in, even if it fluttered away in the next second (to which he would usually respond by pushing me to try harder). For a long time I thought he was inevitably going to ruin my chances at love. That no one could match him and his unconditional kindness had somehow shattered any potential true love I could have out there. A part of me still believe this may be true, but the larger half of me has found his nurturing has simply raised my standards. Expectations can be met as long as I never lose love for myself.
No one can show you how to love or even who to love. But my father comes close every time he looks at me, with a silently proud eye that reminds me I am worthy. Worthy of my own love, and someday the rest will fall into place. That’s all he has ever asked, constantly demanded of me, to see myself as he sees me. The imperfections may prevent me from doing this on a daily basis, but today I am reminded.
We are not defined by those who we choose to love, but rather those who let us love ourselves.
Today my father’s eyes show mostly heartache, both a physical pain and emotional distress. An honest epiphany of things important in life, one I share in. If he looks in my eyes though he will see something else, he will see the eyes he gave me – the ones that will reflect the love he deserves.
My eyes are love.
I used to think I read love stories and got enthralled in romantic comedies to somehow live vicariously through their plots. As if my own love life were so menial when compared that I needed false characters to live a life for me, a life in which the end were tied neatly in a bow and nothing was questioned. The happy ever after experience I could constantly find by popping in a movie and pressing play. I was also no stranger to the tagline “I live vicariously.” But after years of coining the phrase and believing it I have come to realize it is a complete fallacy.
I am not lying when I say I am drawn to a good love story. However, I have recently come to learn that there is a difference between appreciating a love story populated by fictional characters and wanting it to be my own. For a long time I would watch my favorite television shows and hear about timeless stories of romance and imagine myself in the roles. Doing this didn’t make it a stretch for me to then think I wanted a love life that was nothing like my own. Something changed. This morning as I began a new novel that I already can predict will lay a couple before me whose love changes them and whose lives involve serendipity I realized all my years of love research actually have nothing to do with vicarious living.
Now I call my major consumption of RomComs and love literature “research” because it makes it all seem much more scientific. When in fact all I have been doing involves becoming absorbed in the lives of others. In the same vane I have claimed to “live vicariously” through friend’s relationships. Referring to all my observations as “research” makes it seem as though I have not been wasting my time pretending that I too someday will have a true love. In reality all I have been doing is comparing.
I don’t in fact want any of the lives I have read on the page or watched on screen. In the moment it certainly feels that way as you are watching a disheveled Bridget Jones be told by Colin Firth’s Darcy that he likes her just the way she is. But the truth of the matter is I don’t want Bridget’s Darcy or Noah from the Notebook or even Lloyd from Say Anything. I don’t want my Gilmore Girl’s high school Dean to appear or for Clark Kent to actually exist. I don’t want a script and I don’t want a character. Depth and personality, while they can seem lifelike in writing, are far more complex than any pen can capture or film can expose. The reason I read and watch the (sometimes) sappy things that I do is far more selfish than appreciating fictional love. I absorb all these stories so that one day I can compare it to my own.
And, no, I am not all the while attempting to script my life. Letting it be and evolve is part of the magic. Perhaps movies did make me believe in romantic magic. But the mere fact I see its existence as probable does not mean I want the scripted form. One day, after I have cleared all the insecure hurtles of my heart I hope I have a story to tell. My own, not an adapted version from a Nicholas Sparks book. I want a story that doesn’t necessarily require plot with highs, lows, and struggles. It doesn’t need to overcome vast turmoil or involve long lost love. My story can be much simpler. It won’t have a “happily ever after” part because that implies the story ends. Mine will not, it will just be happy. There will be the mundane fights that sometimes don’t make it past the cutting room floor. There will be yelling and disagreements as well as spontaneous adventures and unexpected honesty. It will be real. And as far as I’m concerned, real is far superior to a man with a “S” emblem across his chest fighting crime, or a 7 year separation only to discover my love wrote to me everyday, or young love swept away by obstacle.
Maybe it’s the writer in me, eager to experience a story worthy of sharing with the world. On the other hand, my love story may be one I am perfectly content experiencing instead of writing. It will be absorbing and words may not describe it. Wait that last part is a lie and far too cliché. Real lovemay not always be described accurately, but I want to try and find the words. Heck I want a guy who hunts them down too. Mine will go beyond cliches (yes such a realm does exist and it makes content a good thing and ever after is not predicted).
I am not saying I won’t keep watching Anne Hathaway movies (she is every woman). I will just be watching them and quietly gloating about how much better my story is. After all mine doesn’t end after an hour and twenty minutes. Credits won’t roll, and nothing fades to black.
I hope.
Clearly this is practical and realistic-
site tracking with Asynchronous Google Analytics plugin for Multisite by WordPress Expert at Web Design Jakarta.