Divorce.

What an ugly, nasty, bitter word. I went into the self-help aisle of the bookstore today to look for books on helping adults deal with their parents’ divorce, and found one with an image of two golden rings splitting on the cover. I want to talk to someone about this, but at the same time, I don’t. Who wants to become the “depressive” girl at the dinner party? I wish I could be one of those people who could hold my even keel and make snarky remarks about my situation, but I really don’t think that would work for me. I hate that I even have to talk about this.

Part of me wants to simply separate myself from this and break down when necessary, but the other part of me tells me it’s unhealthy. Who the hell wants to hear their friend talk about the break-up of their parents, anyway? I don’t even want to hear myself talk about it. Why does it feel like when my dad is divorcing my mom, he’s also divorcing me?

 

Love is an island

Sometimes life is chaos – static on a television screen. There is so much going on, and we can’t make sense of it all. All we hear is the white noise that the sensory overload of life creates. We are constantly being bombarded – our five senses experience so much at the same time that we couldn’t possibly have the space in our minds to interpret all that is being absorbed. Sight. Touch. Scent. Sound. Taste. To top it all off, our emotions have a way of coloring our world and our senses with all that it touches. The result? A muddled mess of color and craze – the blur and the fury that we call our life experience.

I had the opportunity a few weekends ago to sort through this sensory disarray, albeit through unnatural means. Three tiny magic mushrooms in a little plastic bag were the catalyst of such a trip that left me feeling focused – completely fixated on that one thing for which the world has an insatiable appetite – love. And with that fixation on love, naturally, came a fixation on beauty. The beauty of the world I lived in, the beauty of the girl that I loved, and the beauty of the purest of my emotions. Removed from my experience was the chaos and the confusion that comes from everyday life. I felt no doubt – I felt sure. And there was nothing in the world that I was more sure of than the fact that I loved her.

The world around me was a dream, and I was on an island. The island was our love, and no one else existed. The oceans danced before me, and the earth breathed and hummed with life. The skies were painted with the color of our love, and the sand beneath my feet was saturated with the depth of my feelings. I was a child – in awe of the world and the love that I felt for the only one who mattered. The world around us became only that which I cared about, and all that mattered was that she was next to me, and that I could feel her arms around me. Simplicity filled the world with incomparable beauty. She smiled, and I felt my heart fill with joy and pride. Her arms wrapped around me, and I felt the island close around us. I felt the wind blowing in our hair, removing everyone else from the scene. I could hear only one song, and that song became the soundtrack to our love story.

Me. Her (and that meant so much more than that one word can ever express.) My arms around her tight. The sand around us. The wind in our hair.  The waves crashing against the pier. Hours pass. I don’t know where I am. I don’t care where I am. The beauty of that feeling was immeasurable. Our island became the vessel on which I found my escape from the unstoppable train of life.

I felt like a child, and wrapped up in her arms, I was safe and oblivious to the world around us. We were innocent and in love, and the world could not touch us. So much beauty can be found in the rejection of everything but a feeling. And when that feeling becomes the entire world – when we tune into one channel and clear away the static of everyday life, life takes on the feeling of art. That day was the canvas on which all we painted was love. Looking back, I see so much beauty that I can hardly stand it. Sorting through the messy scatterings of my memories, I know one thing is true – that feeling is the most reality I’ve ever felt.

 

Post from the past: Life is Short…Don’t Waste Your Time.

I stood outside of the Forever 21 in Union Square, waiting for the girl to arrive, since it was the only place she knew in San Francisco. Tourist trap, I thought. Why was I even there? Why would I even want to meet up with a girl who suggested meeting up at a place like Forever 21? We were supposed to meet up as friends, and I was supposed to show her around San Francisco. Everything within me revolted against taking this girl around the city. I didn’t want to meet her. The thought of spending a mere afternoon with her made me want to shoot myself in the foot. She had expressed an interest me and had been calling me for months, so I finally resigned myself to my tour-guide fate. The sun beat down on my face as I squinted to see if she was surfacing from the Powell BART station. I didn’t want her to surface.

My heart started beating wildly. I can escape, I thought. I could make a run for it right now, and I would never have to see her again. My heart started pounding in my chest. I performed a frenzied scan of the BART station in front of me, and then BAM! I booked it. I booked it as fast as I could towards the most nondescript part of San Francisco, the Financial District. I figured the Financial District would be the last place she would want to be, so I raced towards the oasis of un-cool. I rushed towards the Montgomery station as though a very large fireball of doom was racing towards me, and scurried down the stairs like my legs were on fire.

I had one girl on my mind, and it definitely wasn’t her.

 

Beautiful love

Memories I love: Sharing alpaca steak in Peru, noticing how beautiful she looked standing at the train station, running to her house covered in sweat last summer, waking up at 2PM, leaving her a note and wandering around her neighborhood, coming home to her smiles every day, cuddling close in the Fremont, not ever finishing the romantic comedy we started, pulling her down on the floor with me, sitting in her lap while drinking wine, pulling her closer in to me at The Cafe in San Francisco, taking road trips with her down south, stopping at Starbucks, grabbing In N Out, waking up early to go to Peru, seeing her go to bed early in my bed, smiling seeing how peaceful she looked, being surprised by her taking me to see The Phantom of the Opera, dancing with her in the Castro, noticing how sexy (and adorable) she looked swaying next to me, not seeing anyone else in the club but her, kissing her all night, having tea with her at Samovar, getting a text from her even though she was right next to me, cuddling closer to her in the middle of the night, walking up Bernal hill together, kissing her, working from home together on Fridays, seeing her smile, lean over, and kiss me, going to Love Sushi with her, wine drenched sunset nights in Carmel, fuzzy romantic memories, noticing how breathtaking she looked at dinner at the Foreign Cinema…

 

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Love in the city

We had the most amazing weekend…going on a sunset cruise under the Golden Gate and around Sausalito, trying dim sum in Chinatown, watching a great movie at the AMC Loews theater downtown, biking through the city and across the Golden Gate, and sharing Irish coffee at the Buena Vista. It’s crazy how much I love her…sometimes I wonder if maybe we were just meant to be. Kissing her wearing our bike helmets while standing on the Golden Gate made me feel so unbelievably happy – I felt like I was falling in  love with her all over again.

 

A year later

…and I still get butterflies when she wraps her arms around me and pulls me in closer early in the morning. Happiness is waking up with her still holding me close, and feeling her breathing gently on my neck as she sleeps. How did I get so lucky?

 

I want you between me and the feeling I get when I miss you

Sometimes, when one person is missing, the whole world seems depopulated.
Alphonse de Lamartine

The reason it hurts so much to separate is because our souls are connected.
Nicholas Sparks, The Notebook

How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.
Carol Sobieski and Thomas Meehan, Annie

If I could grab a star in the sky every time I thought of you, the whole night sky would be in my palm.

Love is missing someone whenever you’re apart, but somehow feeling warm inside because you’re close in heart. Kay Knudsen

Missing someone gets easier every day because even though it’s one day further from the last time you saw each other, it’s one day closer to the next time you will.

I want you between me and the feeling I get when I miss you,
but everything here’s telling me I should be fine,
so why is it so, it bothers below that I’m missing you every time?

I got used to you whispering things to me into the evening,
We followed the sun, and it’s colors, and left this world,
it seems to me, that I’m definitely, hearing the best that I’ve heard,.

So throw me a rope, to hold me in place,
show me a clock, for counting my days, down,
Cause everything’s easier when you’re beside me,
Come back and find me,
Cause I feel alone.

Whenever you go it’s like holding my breath under water

 

A girl can dream

Sometimes, when we’re cuddled close in bed, and I can feel her arms around me, holding me tight, I imagine a ring around her finger. I feel butterflies rushing through my body like wildfire. When I consciously think to myself, “I’m lying in bed with my wife,” I feel so weak and so proud that I can hardly stand it.

 

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