Preamble,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears." - Gibran
Chapter I: Pre-him:
Swoons, sighs, dreams and Adam…
For as long as I can remember, I’ve had ethereal friends ,
most people would call them imaginary but I always insisted that they did not
materialize in my imagination out of thin air, their souls, their essences’
must exist somewhere taking various forms.
Adam was my ethereal lover, he had a story that I am not
about to tell, I’ve dedicated pages and pages to it , and to cut a long
chronicle short I’ll briefly tell you why Adam was my lover and why he remained
so for nearly 8 years in one simple sentence.
Adam’s soul was essentially what everyone desires in a partner, pure and
genuine! The rest of the details were entirely up to my fantasies about Mr.
Right and what he should be , I tailored him to fit me , he wasn’t a full
option man, he was as real as my love for him, flaws and everything, do you now
understand why I don’t call him imaginary?
The reason Adam was a part of my life wasn’t a manifestation
of a desire for companionship or intimacy; it was just one of those fantasies
that spiraled out of control. To cut a very long story short, Adam became the
standard on which all guys are measured against, and though this sounds typical
and somewhat normal, with me it was a bit different, because everything I do is
over the top, normal is just not how I roll.
I created a scoring chart, an Adam scoring chart, with
specific criteria that potential candidates need to match with at least 85%
similarity to pass check….YEP! Very few
guys scored above 40%, not because Adam was too good to be true or too hard to
find, but because the criteria was intentionally specific and the scoring was
strict and rigid. Do you now understand why I said, Adam wasn’t a manifestation
of the desire to find prince charming, although in many occasions I convinced
people and myself of that very misleading and off base notion.
The buildup
She always looked out for me; we’ll call her my fairy
godmother to get the whole fairytale atmosphere going. She is a badass fairy
godmother though; I have her trademark pinch bruises all over my arms as
testimonies of her constant protectiveness.
She had plenty to say about my love life but she never actually
verbalized, she didn’t need to, I could tell from the way she shakes her head
that she wasn’t a fan of neither my choices nor approaches, but I guess she
wanted my learning experience to run its full course.
She talked about him, in every occasion that allowed the
topic to be brought up, throwing in a casual “you’d really get along well”
every now and then. What really caused
the buildup was the fact that every time I talked about my dreams, she talked
about him, not in a way that suggests that he is the dude with the limping
beige horse, the crooked spear and the awkward expression that often strolls
through them dangling a plate number that reads prince charming. No, not him.
Rather someone who somehow ethereally shares those dreams of mine, probably
minus the above mentioned fella. I got
intrigued at first, and with time, I became hooked to my dosage of stories
about him and her impression of him (that I later on learnt was on point). For
me, that’s when it all started….
Interjection:
Moments of impact
I often cry at movies, something that I hate to admit, but I
do it. I mean cut me some slack, some movies are very good and those theatres
are dark, and it’s not like I wail or anything, just a few tears where I can
relate and sometimes when the extremely hot lead actor faces a tragic
death! Anyways, this brings us to the
last movie I cried at and why it’s relevant! The movie was called “The Vow” ,
in a nutshell the movie is about a couple that found a way back to each other
and fell in love all over again after some very unfortunate events! In the movie the lead actor talks about
moments, and how our lives and stories as human beings are the sum of all the
moments we encounter, he then mentioned something about moments of impact and
how they define the milestones of our journey….or something to that effect.
Chapter II: Veni, Vidi, Vici
A huge chapter of my life, perhaps the biggest yet, had come
to an end that night, I was full of raging emotions and even though fear was
dominating, there was an opponent fiercely pulling the rug away from fear, a
sensation that I could take on the world and do pretty much anything I please,
now don’t ask me where that surge of confidence and enthusiasm came from
because I didn’t know, I still don’t but I was thankful.
I’ve always taken initiatives, being impulsive was kind of
my thing, and to those who think they know me, that’s hard to believe because I
am famous for being the obsessive planner, Monica Geller! But to those who know me very well, it’s what
they’re used to seeing, they know that my plans and my obsessions are not more
than a safety blanket which is also a wall hanging that doesn’t spend much time
on the wall but doesn’t do the job in the cold winter days. Ok…focus!
I toyed with the idea of approaching him, I didn’t know how
to go about it, I wasn’t even sure why I wanted to approach him. But that
blessed night, the surge of courage teamed up with my curiosity and
inexplicable force drawing me to him and they all crafted a Facebook
message…..a moment of impact!
I grabbed him brain first and we got on a rollercoaster,
swirling fast across unchartered territory! Both terrified but excited and our
hands naturally found themselves in a lock, perfectly fitted although mine were
of a midget!
Interlude: The Butterfly effect
According to Wikipedia, the butterfly effect is a concept in
Chaos Theory that suggests that one event can change the course of events in
general and result in a completely different scenario.
When I first started writing this piece, I thought it’d go
on forever; it will not have a final chapter. That maybe when I die and someone
bothers to dust off my writings and maybe look for something worth publishing,
this would be the story they never publish, but tell the press about. “The
story she never finished”. That maybe they’d come to him (yes I die first, I am
selfish like that), ask him to write the final chapter and he refuses, because
to him our story doesn’t end with the death of either of us.
A butterfly flapped its wings, and the hurricane formed, it
came churning our way, destroying all the outlines I’d laid for all the
chapters I wanted to write, all the summits and all the valleys, all the roads,
all the smiles and all the tears. And I’m left with a chronicle…
Chapter III: Soundtrack
Writing this chapter post the impact of the butterfly effect
is painful, because the memories are suppressed, alive but suppressed, and
invoking them enhances the yearning I’ve been attempting to master.
Perhaps I can’t tell you where we started, but I’ll tell you
where we didn’t. We didn’t start at
subtle hints and mild flirts; we didn’t start at shy smiles and hesitant
approaches. It didn’t start with an awkward first date filled with nervous
laughter and small talk, in fact, it never felt like it had a starting point,
even our first encounter felt like two old mates picking up right where they
left off in a previous life. He had me at “It feels like the music you hear for
the first time yet feel was written just for you” and that is exactly what it
was, humming a tune of an old song stuck in the back of your head, remembering
the lyrics as the days unfold, savoring a joy in learning what feels familiar.
The lyrics came running back to our minds, and we sang out loud, mostly odd and
out of tune but we sang! At a frightening pace, we moved from remembering and
exchanging old rhymes to having each other’s lyrics memorized and coming up
with new lyrics for the soundtrack of the lifetime we intended to spend
together.
Chapter IV: …and then there were two
I am not entirely sure how or when it happened; I am not
even sure what exactly happened! All I know is: our flame like a phoenix burnt
to its own destruction.
They said the distance makes the heart grow fonder but they
lied. The heart grew weary, doubtful, and frightened. Distance distorted the
perfectly chaotic mosaic, distance muffed the resonance of the soundtrack and
instead of tunes, the heart heard thunder, the echo of thin glass shattering on
a cold floor, the sound of friction of broken glass against bare feet. Distance
tugged at us, relentless in its pursuit to occupy the spaces in our
togetherness, the spaces we left for the winds of heaven to dance in between.
And we caved, as the spaces grew wider, foggy from all the sighs of
frustration, our faces became unrecognizable to each other, and the lyrics we
once lived by weren’t convincing anymore, and the harder we tried, the further
we drifted.
The Phoenix landed, folded its wings and tucked its head in
its fiery tears, heaving, grunting, moaning…. it got really quite before
bursting into a bright flame that settled into ashes. We cried over it, hoping
our tears would resurrect it but should the phoenix rise from its own ashes, it
does on its own terms, you can’t blow the life back into it.
We shook hands, exchanged olive branches and then there were
two….
And the rebirth of the Phoenix remains a silent plea.
The End
