I know a woman once. She once loved a man but walked away after getting tired of waiting, waiting for this man to make up his mind. She’s a pacifist. She made no decisions in matters dealing with her heart, she was only good at one thing, bailing. So she left him before he could leave her.
On his tenth anniversary with his wife, he sent this woman 21 messages, and when emails failed to convey his feeling properly, he texted her. He wanted something with her, a fling, a reliving of the past, perhaps. I did not know. This woman never told me what happened after receiving those messages. But if I knew her at all, nothing would have happened. If there was one thing she liked more than bailing, it was avoidance. When she moved on, she really moved on.
I like to imagine a different type of story, a story where two people, old lovers perhaps, would re-meet fifteen or so years later and finally have a go at things, properly. They learned relationship, not anyone else's but their particular brand of relationship, is like the changing seasons: there will be climax, and there will be mundane, but they know through these ups and downs, peaks and valleys, they were going to be by each other's side. They understood each other, intrinsically.
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It started last year, exactly this time. Before you could feel autumn in the air, before the leaves were turning into crispy papyrus, twirling as they fell, lingering in midair, unrelentingly grabbing onto the last bit of air before breaking into millions of pieces.
Market Street was getting dark just after 7. End of August, I remembered it because I started shopping at Bebe's like I once did in the nineties. I could see the store from where I jogged, on a treadmill, before I had a private trainer, before my very first long distance race, before I knew the seasons would change in this city – I thought it only happened in the rural parts of the world. Not here, not when one fashioned pink dresses and yellow sunglasses all year long.
For a while the air was intoxicatingly sweet, exhilarating and unpredictable; there were white and pink flowers covering the skyline, falling petals covering the tree-lined street. It was like a snowstorm, except that it was not going to melt; it remained at the bottom of your shoes, and from there, it took shape.
But then inexplicably, winter came and we went into hibernation. You and I. After the blossoming flowers were the falling leaves, dark, brown stains covering the pavement, mixed in with the raining hail. One might have thought that those trees were dead, the branches were bare but more importantly, they appeared to be giving up on living, tired of struggle with the brutalities and abuse of the weather, tired of losing its canopy, feeling exposed and vulnerable and no one would hear their silent cries. The tears in the form of rain drops dripped slowly from these lifeless branches, puddles accumulating just below the roots of the tree. Occasionally a dog or two being walked would stop and scratch their itches against the trunk of the trees, no one noticed the rotting piles of leaves, until one day the street sweepers came by and scooped them all away.
Hearts were hardened, and we became sarcastic, cagy and doubtful of the prospect. We stopped self-congratulating and trusting our gut instincts; we thought we would never see those petals again. The winter nights were long, and dreary; they smelled not death but despair.
One day, without warning, unexpectedly, came the spring. The ice was thawed out, and we were at a brink of turning over a new leaf. You and I. A new beginning. The clock was reset. This time, we seemed to find our rhythm, the steady drumbeat of our hearts, and the high and low tides of our moods.
So we wasted no time at all and declared a celebration of the spring. In honor of the past errors and misunderstanding, the imminent yet unknown future, and the fleeting, however precious, present.
We held our hands, ten fingers interlocked, tight grip full of reassurance for each other. But alas, we were not full of bravery; we were only full of melancholy.
But if the seasons taught us anything, it was not courage that we needed; it was patience, and the acceptance of inevitable.
And if the turning of the seasons was inevitable, so were you and I.
For a while the air was intoxicatingly sweet, exhilarating and unpredictable; there were white and pink flowers covering the skyline, falling petals covering the tree-lined street. It was like a snowstorm, except that it was not going to melt; it remained at the bottom of your shoes, and from there, it took shape.
But then inexplicably, winter came and we went into hibernation. You and I. After the blossoming flowers were the falling leaves, dark, brown stains covering the pavement, mixed in with the raining hail. One might have thought that those trees were dead, the branches were bare but more importantly, they appeared to be giving up on living, tired of struggle with the brutalities and abuse of the weather, tired of losing its canopy, feeling exposed and vulnerable and no one would hear their silent cries. The tears in the form of rain drops dripped slowly from these lifeless branches, puddles accumulating just below the roots of the tree. Occasionally a dog or two being walked would stop and scratch their itches against the trunk of the trees, no one noticed the rotting piles of leaves, until one day the street sweepers came by and scooped them all away.
Hearts were hardened, and we became sarcastic, cagy and doubtful of the prospect. We stopped self-congratulating and trusting our gut instincts; we thought we would never see those petals again. The winter nights were long, and dreary; they smelled not death but despair.
One day, without warning, unexpectedly, came the spring. The ice was thawed out, and we were at a brink of turning over a new leaf. You and I. A new beginning. The clock was reset. This time, we seemed to find our rhythm, the steady drumbeat of our hearts, and the high and low tides of our moods.
So we wasted no time at all and declared a celebration of the spring. In honor of the past errors and misunderstanding, the imminent yet unknown future, and the fleeting, however precious, present.
We held our hands, ten fingers interlocked, tight grip full of reassurance for each other. But alas, we were not full of bravery; we were only full of melancholy.
But if the seasons taught us anything, it was not courage that we needed; it was patience, and the acceptance of inevitable.
And if the turning of the seasons was inevitable, so were you and I.
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