27

Yesterday, I turned 27.

Continuation:

It’s been nearly a week since my birthday.

There’s a quote by Henry de Montherlant, “happiness writes in white ink on a white page.”

That’s why I’ve been struggling, truly. I haven’t been able to piece words together to write short stories let alone add something to this blog. Here, this, it’s always been a place where I’m managed to describe the visceral pain, the numbing disconnect I feel. But happiness, happiness, it’s so hard to capture. It’s not even the happiness that’s difficult to articulate, it’s how it drives me so distant from the literature I know, the writing I am capable of.

The themes I explore are usually related to negative emotions, pain, sadness, heartbreak, death etc… So what do I write, I mean how dare I even attempt to try and capture what joy feels like? Or how the way contentment sinks in like a marshmallow into a mug of hot chocolate; gently bobbing out waiting to be consumed, yet we all, always save it for the end don’t we?

A month ago, I got to experience two weeks of complete bliss. A proper blessing. A vacation that was not only desired but to be very frank it was needed. I met someone, someone fantastic. It didn’t take but a single day to fall in love. Words leaked from our mouths, we both listened, we both understood. She wasn’t a woman from any of the circles I’ve been used to being in, she wasn’t a recovering addict, or an addict, she wasn’t someone who embodied the misery they carry so deeply that it became her identity. She was just a person. A complicated one yes. But one that saw the monkeys penetrating the giant holes in the houses that we were staring at. Of course the monkeys were just in my imagination, I have intrusive thoughts like those. I’ve never shared things of that nature with someone, not because o my thoughts are too dark or mischievous but rather sometimes they are bit too weird aren’t they?

Until she saw them, and laughed, and held me and said yeah I see em. She could even see the big one in the back, I didn’t even need to tell her about it. It was at that moment, it was the moment when words turned from sounds mouths make to stories that help us understand each other, it was at that moment when holding hands didn’t feel like it was like holding an inanimate object but rather the blood both our limbs carried were flushing against each other. It was moments like those, the food she cooked though I’m supposed to be the cook. The way she scratched my back without me needing to ask or even push my body into her hand, when I ask her about that she always says, “It just happens naturally.” So naturally is what hasn’t been present in my life for so many years.

It really doesn’t hurt that she looks so good too.

It’s the small things, the way we sit on the floor and eat together, the way she would sit in my arms on the floor as we would stare out into the sky and listen to our playlist, the way she would take the seat against the wall sometimes so that I would let her absorb me, because she too wanted to hold not just be held. It was the way her instinct to, “I don’t drink coffee.” wasn’t to ask why, but rather to find me the best orange juice in the city and keep the fridge stocked.

To be honest all these things, they make everything so beautiful, yet none of them even hold a candle to the way we communicate. Fearful, not of hurting one another, and never of not being understood but fearful of how communication like this could have existed in the first place, hidden somewhere between honesty and hurry.

After all, we got so close because we only had 2 weeks together, she would leave after. Not to return for at this point what neither of us are sure of. So we skipped through it, all the bullshit. She was her weirdest most honest self, and I placed every truth and uncovered every lie into her loving arms. Because truly we didn’t have the time to take it slow.

I’m writing a story, loosely based around this whole thing, it’s just wild how apple pie could lead to a kitkat shared at the airport. I wouldn’t dare say final.

It’s hard to write because no words ever feel like they’ll do justice. So I’ll try and try until I can capture even a hundredth of it, because even that would be enough to one day be remembered as a myth.

Every year my birthdays are days I avoid, I didn’t get to have her next to me for this one but the truth is, she still made it an amazing day. This year, I was truly angry to still be stuck in this country, yet it does feel like everything happens for a reason and that maybe just maybe this wasn’t all just a punishment but also a lesson. A lesson that educated me enough to try and succeed in this.