Category: melodramatic heart

Mute button

The hardest thing I haven’t said…

I sit there not saying the words. They might be redemption or implosion, but words once out there become woven into the narrative of who we are. And I’ll sit there mutely not grasping repemption, for fear of implosion.

I had a carefully constructed framework and you had your place, securely delinated, safe, measured and known. And then you opened a door that I no longer thought was there and I glimpsed something. Perhaps. The balance is off. I can’t restore it to how it was. To all intents and purposes it’s smoke and mirrors, but I can’t return to how things were.

But I’m too scared to name it, too scared to ask for clarity. Too caring to risk upsetting the delicate balance of your life. Too mindful of friendship and respect to explore it.

You mean far too much to me and I can’t tell you that. You make me laugh about ridiculous things, you make me appreciate living. You care but I can’t let you in any further because you can’t be that person for me. Certainly not at present and I’m not sure you could ever at all.

You are flawed and imperfect and you make me heart-full with joy.

And the reason I can’t deny this to myself is the fact that I can’t hide the beaming joy whenever I talk or think of you. With one look people see that, I see that. Perhaps the only person who doesn’t is you.

So much subtext passes you by. You know all sorts of things but I suspect subtle covert communication will always fail to register. So I get away with feeling so much and nobody risks anything.

I wish I had grasped that moment and found out what you meant. It was unexpected. Outwith the negotiated bounds of how we relate. And I just let it wash on by.

You are not for me, you might actually be quite bad for me. But you make me happy and you care. That’s really quite a lot. And for now, until the balance changes again that will be fine.

I just wish you would find someone who made you glow, too. You are bright and difficult and wonderous and you deserve to adore and be adored.

Melodramtic heart indeed. I’ll shut up now and get back to baking.

Resolve

I took cranberry muffins and apple muffins, key lime pie and grasshopper pie. I became queen of puddings.

I drank of all cups and became somewhat sloshed. Note to self; if you can’t feel your lips, STOP drinking, but the tequila was *good*.

It was so many, many good things and some suprising ones too, but even with chickens calling the dawn 2011 started with sparks and warmth and wit and merriment and I would have it no other way.

So finally we come to resolution. I resolve to be independent, I resolve to be me and I resolve to be determined. There are specifics too but I shan’t bore you, the headlines are the main thing.

I just hope this love of the world continues. And that I have some red wool because I promised a very special young man a red hat of his own. I wonder if knitting needles will pass security???

You are not right…

Love is many things. It is the greening of the trees in spring and the fiery autumnal blaze. It is the sharp tang of coffee in the morning and the melting sweetness of apples. The smell of cut grass, the sweep of the breeze across a cheek. The fall of thick hair that swishes, the sunlight sparkling on clean glass. Love is what we make it, it is in every breath and every action. If we can walk with love then our hearts will be resiliant and strong.

When I refer to love I am not talking about possession, I am talking about universal and unconditional regard.  I am, in fact, telling the world that the object of my  praise is lovely.  Consider yourself blessed to have been loved and seen and welcomed as you are, to have been lovely in my eyes, for that is great praise.

Yet, beware.  Tread carefully, for this is no trivial matter, it is my heart that you tread upon. It is a fragile thing made of glass and can be flawed irreparably by thoughtless pressure. I have held the broken pieces in my hands and yet they have mended and come together again after much pain and sorrow. Forever more shall I avoid such sorrow and pain, that sucks the breath from me and sucks the life from my eyes.

You were not right, you did not hear what I had to say.  You never hurt me apart from then.  The pain that you felt was not of my making but your own.  It was your grief and you needed to grieve and I always understood that.

Myth of the Modern Romance

What kind of self-sacrificing and cruel world is it that we live in that peddles the myth of true love and happily ever after?  Maybe I am just getting cynical.  Perhaps a little self-analytical.  Whatever it is I am increasingly uncomfortable with the romantic myth.

I speak as one who believes in romance, true love, with hearts and flowers and deep emotion.  However, I can’t help but be worried when I see a beautiful, talented, clever, funny woman doubt herself, doubt her worth because the man she loved behaved in a way that hurt her.  His attempts at kindness were in fact just a salve to his own guilt and he has ended up destroying someone who he once loved.  I know, she will get over it.

It made me think of the myth, the star-crossed lovers.  We, the hapless audience, know they are meant for each other, their destiny is clear.  Yet somehow there is some miscommunication, a falling out, an asteroid strike.  The lovers are separated.  Maybe they believe that their love cannot be.  Maybe one behaves in an unspeakable fashion.  Perhaps the other one overreacts to an innocent situation.  Things happen, paths twist and turn, there might be a 2-D, obviously flawed, red-sweater wearing substitute for a while.  And yet, at the end of the day, they manage to get back together and then cue the soaring, romantic violins.

From Jane Austen, via Hollywood, to Jilly Cooper, a thousand Mills&Boon and untold soaps and series we keep being fed this idea that true love will out.  Does this just encourage the hopelessly deranged, fools for love into believing that somehow it will all work out in the end?  Their Romeo is merely playing out a scene in a well-worn script and will return, post-haste before the poison takes effect, and All’s Well That Ends Well?

Instead they end up with poisoned lives, waiting for someone who is just not going to come back, hopelessly going round in circles trying to find out where they failed, what went wrong, how they could be cleverer, thinner, taller, prettier whatever it might take to win back the affections of their intended.  Maybe this will have some positive outcome in the long run.  The new dress/haircut/hobby might help them move forwards and find someone else.  However it seems that it takes months, years even, for the romantic diehards to find the point where they no longer have a Joni Mitchell yearning soundtrack to their every decision, event, moment.

I speak as someone who is part of this pathetic and tragic band.  More or less, and with good humour, I am aware that I am pining for him.  Even as I do it I recognise its futility and pathological insanity.

I’m aware my belief in an infinite capacity to love affects what I do, because while on one level I want to challenge him to explain what went wrong, why there is no future, where I failed*. Alas, I am terrified of losing the friend that I might have.  The qualities that endear him to me, well they still endear him to me.  And, as I have an infinite capacity to love, I can accept that he does not have any romantic inclinations towards me and still enjoy his friendship.  However I am aware of the cataclysmic effects of telling a former beau that you still really very much like them like that.  So when counseled to, “tell him how you feel, you’ve nothing to lose” I am aware that actually, in fact, I have the companionship, and company, of a very special and unusual person to lose and that my life would be the poorer without that.

All of which is nearing rational, except that I have the meta-notion of the romantic story-line underscoring the back-drop of my life.  And I can’t help but think that if only we cleared the air, if only I made him understand, if only I were clever, thinner, stronger, wittier or whatever it would all be okay and we could try again.

At which point I want to tear my hair out because the meta-story is not a true reflection of real life and it will not happen…

So please, all peddlers of truth in the guise of fiction, while Jane Austen makes it clear that Lizzie Bennet will get her man, real life does not work like that.  Please stop brainwashing us into believing it does.

Interesting that Will-the-bard didn’t have a terribly positive view of romance…  Maybe I should have been reading Shakespeare rather than Austen…

*yes, I’m well aware that I didn’t actually fail.  Lord alone knows what did actually happen.  I do know that it wasn’t (all) me and it was never a test of worthiness.  Despite how I sometimes feel.

Apologies are due at this point.  Firstly to you, dear reader, for the profusion of italics and secondly to the very-wise-friend who spends a great deal of time trying to convince to pull my socks up and get on with things.  I am actually listening…

Music and the soul

As I sit here in what might be described as ‘a bit of a funk’, I am wondering what it is about music that changes my being, moves me so?  The songs that take me to a moment, a place, a feeling, a colour?  The ones that make me weep, the ones that make me wistful. 

I couldn’t get the music quite right when I was in the gym last night, it wsa okay but I didn’t have that euphoric whoosh that comes from finding the right theme.  This morning i just a little bleu, and I need something softer than I might normally choose to soothe my ragged self.

It fixes me, it uplifts me and it nourishes me. 

I shall dance under the stars and in the rain and it will be magnificent.