Proving once again that my life is an open book... though somewhat scary this time
So here it is. I had thought to try to explain him, to explain us, to explain how it felt...but I found that when I was guarded and when i tried to make our story tame enough for the world wide web, i cheapened it. Part of me wants to keep every memory for myself, but there is so much beauty in our story that it begs to be shared. Here you have it. Entries straight from my personal journal. Raw, passionate, lengthy, sometimes in second person who knows why, perhaps less than eloquent, but honest. World, welcome to my
4/21/05
Ati is something intriguing. It’s difficult to say how I feel about him. Sometimes I get theses little excited butterflies when I think about him, which, I suppose, would indicate a crush, but the sensible side of me wonders how I could crush on someone who I’ve only met maybe a week or two ago. Besides, he’s almost exactly a year older than Jake! Well, I suppose it isn’t in the nature of crushes to be sensible. I think, though, that it is Ati who has helped me realize how quickly and obsessively I can begin to crush. Por eso, obviamente, that would put me at the mercy of every crush. I need to be more picky.
(Funny how I was unwilling to tell even my journal how hard I was falling for him…)
5/19/05
-Respirando Humo-
Fijada en su humo de cigarillo
Soplado
Bailando lentamente
Hacia el techo
Hacia el cielo
Como mil espiritus
A quienes no importa el tiempo
Pienso en adios
Suspiro
Y intento no exhalar
5/22/05
-This isn’t completely true-
There are only two colors of paint in his room, sky blue and a shade of yellow that won’t quite admit to being pastel. Blinking through day-old mascara you stare at the ceiling, yellow, and wonder which color you would be of the two. If you and he were colors, that is. This is what he does to you, see? Slow, meandering thoughts that flow more than pass through your pleasantly cloudy mind. His presence is a drug. Breathing deep you let your eyes close again. You smell the night before…his hair gel, your perfume, sweat…It’s too warm. He’s too warm, but all the same you’re surviving on his soft exhale on your neck. You match your breathing with his. Are your lungs the same size? You lazily wonder. And what about your hearts? You roll over, his bed is small. Now he’s breathing on your mouth. God, you sigh softly, he’s so perfect when he sleeps. He looks oddly pensive, not like the typical lips-pooched-out snoozer you might usually wake up with. Is he really even asleep? Every line is absent from his honest forhead and youthful cheeks. In…out, he breathes. In… …out. You can’t help but reach out to brush away a perfect ringlet that is caught in his eyelashes as your other hand fingers his ring strung around your neck. Who are you? You ask him silently. In…out, he breathes. In… … …out.
05/28/05
Primera vez que he sentido deprimida en Espana. Atilano se ha ido a Madrid y no regresa hasta el viernes.
Voy a tumbarme en la cama, comer galletas digestivas, y leer el diario de Bridget Jones.
05/29/05
When he holds you in his arms you forget he’s not the one. You unclench your fists and suddenly you can do nothing but feel. You melt into him and shove that box that holds reality further back into the corner of the attic of your brain. Reality can wait. He may not be the one, but he is the here and now, and, try as you might, you can’t seem to make anything else matter.
>>>
It’s getting to the point where I can’t seem to write about what’s really happening because I don’t want to admit it’s coming to an end. Despite what people say, I believe denial to be a powerful ally.
>>>
I couldn’t really tell you how tall he is, or even whether he’s shorter than I am, but I could just about tell you how many perfect little ringlets he shakes out of his eyes once every 4.16 minutes, and that he touches is face with his right hand when he’s tired. He has a scar on his right cheek, the only aged mark on skin like a child, and wrinkles on the top of his nose when he smiles. A real smile, that is, a fierce one. Like all of us who work in customer service he has his plastic one too, but the one ill remember is the impish, squinty-eyed crinkle-nosed "I couldn’t love life more" grin that makes me want to hit him and kiss him immediately and all at once.
He can move his hips like they’re a part of the music, and when he sings along to Spanish songs he goes halfway to that wrinkle-nosed smile. I think that, of every picture I keep of him in my mind, that one will cause me the most pain. That and the honest, unfaltering gaze in which he holds me on days when I’m lucky. He’s one of those people whose eye color you forget because, every time you look to see, you get caught up in the story there. You can tell it’s a true story, at that. They are truly caring eyes, with just a hint of mystery.
Anyway, I think they’re blue.
He stands behind the bar and pours drinks with flourish and one hand tucked cavalierly behind his back. He’s impish in that, even though he’d never say it, every flipped bottle and chain of blown smoke rings whispers "watch me…Look what I can do…"though not in a show-off, center of attention kind of way.
In so many ways I see a little boy in him. A little boy with scars between his eyes from a car crash that almost took his life, who has had more partners than he can count on two hands, has moved to a different continent to help his brother run a bar on Santa Lucia, and who has one of the most developed senses of propriety that I have ever encountered. He grew up in catholic school, but that could hardly be the reason why. He’s lived more than many an adult I’ve ever met. He’s so real. I love the way he keeps his eyes wide open while he laughs brazenly at life. Figuratively of course. Too many people don’t give life the respect it deserves, much less to people. He radiates respect. I love the way he locks eyes with people when he meets them, especially when I am proudly there at his arm. I goes a long way in making them feel worthwhile.
He has small-ish hands, but nothing to be mistaken for weak in his handshake. "Mucho gusto." He says with a twinkle in his eye, "Feliz navidad." And I smile, knowing I am the only soul who realizes exactly to what that wink and those greetings are referring. I don’t know what drew me to him in that first instant, but it was something strong, and it never faded. More than most I’ve ever met, he’s a good man.
His name is Atilano.
06/07/05
You loved him.
I did?
Yes, you loved him with all your heart, just like I’ve taught you.
It hurts.
I know. Isn’t it beautiful?
>>>
You know when you sit down to write and…and…nothing comes? It’s then that you know you really are screwed. When the words stick to the corners of your brain and the stories get caught somewhere in your aorta…
Maybe that’s why no-one’s ever written a definitive work on love.
God please give me rest.
06/08/05
I told myself not to think about it, to keep my mind off him, to think about other things. The beautiful problem about my life here is, I’ve found, that there isn’t anything else. My life here goes day by day. I can’t find something new to worry about even when I try. Maybe that’s why we live that way in the States, we collect worries so that when one hurts too much we can gloss over it in our minds with another one, like slamming your hand in the door so you’ll forget your head hurts so much. We avoid pain with a myriad of quick fixes and escapist techniques.
Can pain be beautiful?
To feel passionately, even if it tears you apart, seems to me something to be marveled.
>>>
Love is a continuum.
Just like knowledge of any subject is a continuum.
Just like sex is a continuum.
Just like Life.
Just like they taught you in algebra class.
He is a continuum too.
It’s as if you were moving towards infinity…
You weren’t there yet of course,
But somewhere in the billions,
And suddenly he yelled back at you from ahead
NO.
STOP.
GO BACK.
And you stood there at 7,009,456 startled, wondering
At what point on this line exists our friendship?
Back there can I
touch your hair hold your hand kiss your face?
Who are you over there?
And,
Well, excuse me but,
Can I ever come back?
06/10/05
There’s nothing left to say about him.
Which is kind of a lie.
06/14/05
…I just wish I understood. I need to get over the fact that I don’t and accept that this is how he wants it. That’s a foreign concept to me.
I miss him.
06/16/05
And suddenly he’s a fleeting dream that you’re sprinting to catch in a butterfly net but even if you could reach him, he’d slip right through the mesh. That’s when you know he really is gone. …but you wonder, when you will you be able to stop hoping?
‘cause hope has never been quite so painful.
-remember to remember me
standing still in your past
floating fast like a hummingbird
hummingbird-
06/20/05
-The Moment-
You giggle cause he’s shivering and tease him cause you’re not, but really it’s just an excuse to hold him close. Every few seconds you’re ribs deep in waves that threaten to topple you both, so you stumble together and you pray with all your might that he won’t let go again. The beach is a dreamy shade of blue, dark and inviting while the sun still sleeps. He looks at you like you’re crazy, which you know you are, and you can’t help but prove it by kissing him hard and warm because he followed you, shivering, into this midnight sea.
You know you aren’t allowed to do that anymore, but in moments like these, the rules of beauty overpower those of propriety or of common sense.
"Sorry" you whisper, your face yet barely a moonbeams width from his. He looks at you that way you love, as if he’s searching your soul straight through your eyes. It’s only then that you begin to shiver, though it has nothing to do with the chill. His arms tighten around your waist and your bare stomachs kiss as you sink into him. The waves swirl around your hips and somehow he’s kissing you without ever breaking that gaze. Nothing else in the world really exists right now, and if it did it would hardly matter. It’s just you, and him, and this second clandestine kiss that you now hold between your lips. Even though the ocean drags the sand grain by grain out from under your feet, just for one precious moment time stands still. There he’ll be forever, frozen still in the sea of your past. You smile and tell him all of that with your eyes. He understands. He takes your frozen hand and together you pace silently back to shore.
6/26/05
-…-
He turns off the ignition and you both sit there staring, as if there’s still a part of the journey left. You feel your empty mind scramble for words but there just aren’t any, so every few silent minutes you make a clumsy attempt at a joke which, if your lucky, lifts the corner of his mouth into a rueful half smile.
You wish he’d look at you, but he’s still staring blankly past the windshield. Irked, you stare fiercely, willing him to feel as desperate as you do. A kiss would be nice. A kind word, a thanks, a tear would do, any of all the things you’ve already thrown on the dashboard. You’re furious at him for not caring more.
"You know I loved you!" your gaze screams silently, "You owe me affirmation at least!"
As if in response he lifts his eyes and, still unable to look at you whispers-
"Me parece que no hay palabras. Esta es la despedida mas difícil de mi vida."
It’s at that moment you realize his eyes are brown. You can see now because that impish spark, that picador glint in his eyes has given way to a dull shade of pain.
"Mierda…" you breathe.
Even if it makes you look stupid, you love it when he’s so much wiser than you. He’s right of course, there are no words for a moment like this, and every clumsy utterance only serves to cheapen the intensity of a moment so full of love and of pain that it becomes oddly beautiful.
He’s hurting just as much as you are, and suddenly his silence means more than all the clinging and the sobs in the world. His eyes fixed on the morning dawning over your driveway, he softly places one hand on your knee. You cover his with both of yours and follow his gaze. Goodbye hangs in the air like a fog.
"Hasta luego." He offers.
And for once in your life, you can’t find one single word more.
06/26/05
I didn’t realize how much he cared till now. Now as every second puts me a few more miles away from him I wonder if there’s something more I could have said…should have said…would have said if I had known.
It was amazing what he said to me:
"Two things" he said after that interminable and impenetrable silence, "Always keep fighting for what you believe in." he paused, counting on his fingers the only two sentences he had left,
"And it seems to me-" another pause
"that if I have acted as I should, the things I would tell you to remember about me, you will already know."
(Except that he said it in Spanish, and it was one of those phrases with a passion that just can’t quite be translated.)
It was the most painful, beautiful goodbye anyone has ever given me. I sat there stumbling over compliments and gratitude, trying to provoke him to a declaration of his caring, when all I had to do was look into those beautiful honest brown eyes to see that it was all there inside. Part of me wishes I’d said more, part of me, less. I wish I’d shed more tears, only because I want him to know how much I cared. How much I’ll always care. Is that selfish? God how beautiful life is in all it’s mystery. The capacity to love, even simply the ability to feel is such a precious gift. To hurt for caring too much is a delicious misfortune. As such, those scared brown eyes will never fade from the eye of my memory. He did…he really did care. So much he had to hide it away. So much it hurt him.
"Te quiero" I said too briskly, squeezed his hand and began to turn away. But instead of the release I expected, his grip tightened.
"Y yo a ti." He said straight into the depths of my eyes like only he has ever been able to do. I don’t think his stare left my soul until I closed the front door behind me and collapsed against it in the sobs I had been holding back. I didn’t even hear him drive away.
It is a beautiful love story.
The wonder of life is that you never know which parts will have a second chapter.
FIN
4/21/05
Ati is something intriguing. It’s difficult to say how I feel about him. Sometimes I get theses little excited butterflies when I think about him, which, I suppose, would indicate a crush, but the sensible side of me wonders how I could crush on someone who I’ve only met maybe a week or two ago. Besides, he’s almost exactly a year older than Jake! Well, I suppose it isn’t in the nature of crushes to be sensible. I think, though, that it is Ati who has helped me realize how quickly and obsessively I can begin to crush. Por eso, obviamente, that would put me at the mercy of every crush. I need to be more picky.
(Funny how I was unwilling to tell even my journal how hard I was falling for him…)
5/19/05
-Respirando Humo-
Fijada en su humo de cigarillo
Soplado
Bailando lentamente
Hacia el techo
Hacia el cielo
Como mil espiritus
A quienes no importa el tiempo
Pienso en adios
Suspiro
Y intento no exhalar
5/22/05
-This isn’t completely true-
There are only two colors of paint in his room, sky blue and a shade of yellow that won’t quite admit to being pastel. Blinking through day-old mascara you stare at the ceiling, yellow, and wonder which color you would be of the two. If you and he were colors, that is. This is what he does to you, see? Slow, meandering thoughts that flow more than pass through your pleasantly cloudy mind. His presence is a drug. Breathing deep you let your eyes close again. You smell the night before…his hair gel, your perfume, sweat…It’s too warm. He’s too warm, but all the same you’re surviving on his soft exhale on your neck. You match your breathing with his. Are your lungs the same size? You lazily wonder. And what about your hearts? You roll over, his bed is small. Now he’s breathing on your mouth. God, you sigh softly, he’s so perfect when he sleeps. He looks oddly pensive, not like the typical lips-pooched-out snoozer you might usually wake up with. Is he really even asleep? Every line is absent from his honest forhead and youthful cheeks. In…out, he breathes. In… …out. You can’t help but reach out to brush away a perfect ringlet that is caught in his eyelashes as your other hand fingers his ring strung around your neck. Who are you? You ask him silently. In…out, he breathes. In… … …out.
05/28/05
Primera vez que he sentido deprimida en Espana. Atilano se ha ido a Madrid y no regresa hasta el viernes.
Voy a tumbarme en la cama, comer galletas digestivas, y leer el diario de Bridget Jones.
05/29/05
When he holds you in his arms you forget he’s not the one. You unclench your fists and suddenly you can do nothing but feel. You melt into him and shove that box that holds reality further back into the corner of the attic of your brain. Reality can wait. He may not be the one, but he is the here and now, and, try as you might, you can’t seem to make anything else matter.
>>>
It’s getting to the point where I can’t seem to write about what’s really happening because I don’t want to admit it’s coming to an end. Despite what people say, I believe denial to be a powerful ally.
>>>
I couldn’t really tell you how tall he is, or even whether he’s shorter than I am, but I could just about tell you how many perfect little ringlets he shakes out of his eyes once every 4.16 minutes, and that he touches is face with his right hand when he’s tired. He has a scar on his right cheek, the only aged mark on skin like a child, and wrinkles on the top of his nose when he smiles. A real smile, that is, a fierce one. Like all of us who work in customer service he has his plastic one too, but the one ill remember is the impish, squinty-eyed crinkle-nosed "I couldn’t love life more" grin that makes me want to hit him and kiss him immediately and all at once.
He can move his hips like they’re a part of the music, and when he sings along to Spanish songs he goes halfway to that wrinkle-nosed smile. I think that, of every picture I keep of him in my mind, that one will cause me the most pain. That and the honest, unfaltering gaze in which he holds me on days when I’m lucky. He’s one of those people whose eye color you forget because, every time you look to see, you get caught up in the story there. You can tell it’s a true story, at that. They are truly caring eyes, with just a hint of mystery.
Anyway, I think they’re blue.
He stands behind the bar and pours drinks with flourish and one hand tucked cavalierly behind his back. He’s impish in that, even though he’d never say it, every flipped bottle and chain of blown smoke rings whispers "watch me…Look what I can do…"though not in a show-off, center of attention kind of way.
In so many ways I see a little boy in him. A little boy with scars between his eyes from a car crash that almost took his life, who has had more partners than he can count on two hands, has moved to a different continent to help his brother run a bar on Santa Lucia, and who has one of the most developed senses of propriety that I have ever encountered. He grew up in catholic school, but that could hardly be the reason why. He’s lived more than many an adult I’ve ever met. He’s so real. I love the way he keeps his eyes wide open while he laughs brazenly at life. Figuratively of course. Too many people don’t give life the respect it deserves, much less to people. He radiates respect. I love the way he locks eyes with people when he meets them, especially when I am proudly there at his arm. I goes a long way in making them feel worthwhile.
He has small-ish hands, but nothing to be mistaken for weak in his handshake. "Mucho gusto." He says with a twinkle in his eye, "Feliz navidad." And I smile, knowing I am the only soul who realizes exactly to what that wink and those greetings are referring. I don’t know what drew me to him in that first instant, but it was something strong, and it never faded. More than most I’ve ever met, he’s a good man.
His name is Atilano.
06/07/05
You loved him.
I did?
Yes, you loved him with all your heart, just like I’ve taught you.
It hurts.
I know. Isn’t it beautiful?
>>>
You know when you sit down to write and…and…nothing comes? It’s then that you know you really are screwed. When the words stick to the corners of your brain and the stories get caught somewhere in your aorta…
Maybe that’s why no-one’s ever written a definitive work on love.
God please give me rest.
06/08/05
I told myself not to think about it, to keep my mind off him, to think about other things. The beautiful problem about my life here is, I’ve found, that there isn’t anything else. My life here goes day by day. I can’t find something new to worry about even when I try. Maybe that’s why we live that way in the States, we collect worries so that when one hurts too much we can gloss over it in our minds with another one, like slamming your hand in the door so you’ll forget your head hurts so much. We avoid pain with a myriad of quick fixes and escapist techniques.
Can pain be beautiful?
To feel passionately, even if it tears you apart, seems to me something to be marveled.
>>>
Love is a continuum.
Just like knowledge of any subject is a continuum.
Just like sex is a continuum.
Just like Life.
Just like they taught you in algebra class.
He is a continuum too.
It’s as if you were moving towards infinity…
You weren’t there yet of course,
But somewhere in the billions,
And suddenly he yelled back at you from ahead
NO.
STOP.
GO BACK.
And you stood there at 7,009,456 startled, wondering
At what point on this line exists our friendship?
Back there can I
touch your hair hold your hand kiss your face?
Who are you over there?
And,
Well, excuse me but,
Can I ever come back?
06/10/05
There’s nothing left to say about him.
Which is kind of a lie.
06/14/05
…I just wish I understood. I need to get over the fact that I don’t and accept that this is how he wants it. That’s a foreign concept to me.
I miss him.
06/16/05
And suddenly he’s a fleeting dream that you’re sprinting to catch in a butterfly net but even if you could reach him, he’d slip right through the mesh. That’s when you know he really is gone. …but you wonder, when you will you be able to stop hoping?
‘cause hope has never been quite so painful.
-remember to remember me
standing still in your past
floating fast like a hummingbird
hummingbird-
06/20/05
-The Moment-
You giggle cause he’s shivering and tease him cause you’re not, but really it’s just an excuse to hold him close. Every few seconds you’re ribs deep in waves that threaten to topple you both, so you stumble together and you pray with all your might that he won’t let go again. The beach is a dreamy shade of blue, dark and inviting while the sun still sleeps. He looks at you like you’re crazy, which you know you are, and you can’t help but prove it by kissing him hard and warm because he followed you, shivering, into this midnight sea.
You know you aren’t allowed to do that anymore, but in moments like these, the rules of beauty overpower those of propriety or of common sense.
"Sorry" you whisper, your face yet barely a moonbeams width from his. He looks at you that way you love, as if he’s searching your soul straight through your eyes. It’s only then that you begin to shiver, though it has nothing to do with the chill. His arms tighten around your waist and your bare stomachs kiss as you sink into him. The waves swirl around your hips and somehow he’s kissing you without ever breaking that gaze. Nothing else in the world really exists right now, and if it did it would hardly matter. It’s just you, and him, and this second clandestine kiss that you now hold between your lips. Even though the ocean drags the sand grain by grain out from under your feet, just for one precious moment time stands still. There he’ll be forever, frozen still in the sea of your past. You smile and tell him all of that with your eyes. He understands. He takes your frozen hand and together you pace silently back to shore.
6/26/05
-…-
He turns off the ignition and you both sit there staring, as if there’s still a part of the journey left. You feel your empty mind scramble for words but there just aren’t any, so every few silent minutes you make a clumsy attempt at a joke which, if your lucky, lifts the corner of his mouth into a rueful half smile.
You wish he’d look at you, but he’s still staring blankly past the windshield. Irked, you stare fiercely, willing him to feel as desperate as you do. A kiss would be nice. A kind word, a thanks, a tear would do, any of all the things you’ve already thrown on the dashboard. You’re furious at him for not caring more.
"You know I loved you!" your gaze screams silently, "You owe me affirmation at least!"
As if in response he lifts his eyes and, still unable to look at you whispers-
"Me parece que no hay palabras. Esta es la despedida mas difícil de mi vida."
It’s at that moment you realize his eyes are brown. You can see now because that impish spark, that picador glint in his eyes has given way to a dull shade of pain.
"Mierda…" you breathe.
Even if it makes you look stupid, you love it when he’s so much wiser than you. He’s right of course, there are no words for a moment like this, and every clumsy utterance only serves to cheapen the intensity of a moment so full of love and of pain that it becomes oddly beautiful.
He’s hurting just as much as you are, and suddenly his silence means more than all the clinging and the sobs in the world. His eyes fixed on the morning dawning over your driveway, he softly places one hand on your knee. You cover his with both of yours and follow his gaze. Goodbye hangs in the air like a fog.
"Hasta luego." He offers.
And for once in your life, you can’t find one single word more.
06/26/05
I didn’t realize how much he cared till now. Now as every second puts me a few more miles away from him I wonder if there’s something more I could have said…should have said…would have said if I had known.
It was amazing what he said to me:
"Two things" he said after that interminable and impenetrable silence, "Always keep fighting for what you believe in." he paused, counting on his fingers the only two sentences he had left,
"And it seems to me-" another pause
"that if I have acted as I should, the things I would tell you to remember about me, you will already know."
(Except that he said it in Spanish, and it was one of those phrases with a passion that just can’t quite be translated.)
It was the most painful, beautiful goodbye anyone has ever given me. I sat there stumbling over compliments and gratitude, trying to provoke him to a declaration of his caring, when all I had to do was look into those beautiful honest brown eyes to see that it was all there inside. Part of me wishes I’d said more, part of me, less. I wish I’d shed more tears, only because I want him to know how much I cared. How much I’ll always care. Is that selfish? God how beautiful life is in all it’s mystery. The capacity to love, even simply the ability to feel is such a precious gift. To hurt for caring too much is a delicious misfortune. As such, those scared brown eyes will never fade from the eye of my memory. He did…he really did care. So much he had to hide it away. So much it hurt him.
"Te quiero" I said too briskly, squeezed his hand and began to turn away. But instead of the release I expected, his grip tightened.
"Y yo a ti." He said straight into the depths of my eyes like only he has ever been able to do. I don’t think his stare left my soul until I closed the front door behind me and collapsed against it in the sobs I had been holding back. I didn’t even hear him drive away.
It is a beautiful love story.
The wonder of life is that you never know which parts will have a second chapter.
FIN