Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Dear Young Dreamer:

May, 2012.

You and I sit, face to face in the middle of the street. I don't sit on the sidewalk because it would be harder to see you, and for the conversation we are about to have, I need us to be facing instead of next to each other. 

It's around midnight, which has become our usual rendezvous time or so it seems. Time for french fries and cold waffles in the park and sneaking into your house and changing two flat tires at 2 a.m. We seem to discuss what really matters late at night, when the world around us has gone to sleep and it's just us. As it should be. The world does seem to interfere in how we relate so this is the perfect time to be real. The dark of the night holds our words and the silence of the night lets the whispers of our hearts sound louder creating our own micro universe for us to exist in.

All the hours leading to this moment I've been terrified to my bones, an eagerness that has been chasing me for the past months in thinking of this day. But now, finally with you. I feel perhaps not calm, but completely focused. Centered. Grounded. 

Small talk lasts only a couple of minutes, as there is no time to lose for we have wasted too much time already. I have wasted too much time already. 

You have just come from a party and you have sneaked out of your house so we can talk. So we sit, and I open my mouth. The night is cold, but there is fire inside of me like the brightest of embers and the words just piece themselves together like a necklace of atoms, one by one forming molecules. I speak endlessly. You nod from time to time, give me a shy smile, or only stare at me. Tonight I can't seem to bring out any words from you and the silence makes itself noted.  Still, I go on. If there is one thing I have learned is not to keep these kind of feelings captive, for they need to be set free. I sense and fear your silence but the flames inside of me make it impossible to stop.

I say all what I have ever meant to say and keep nothing in. In my entire life I have never been so sure of what I wanted as I am in this moment. So my lips utter words my spirit has been longing to say for so long.

You look back at me with your big, brown doe eyes and the curly hair that frames your face. You don't realize, but I am equally surprised as you are to hear those words out loud. So I say them again. This time, I think, I say them for myself to hear. And I keep saying them over and over, and it feels good. It feels like a dam has broken and now the might of the river runs freely. There is an organic beat to those words, like a song I've yet to fully understand.

I then proceed to give you what I have been working on for so long. I get the envelope that sits next to me on the pavement, and which holds my heart inside and hand it over to you.

I ask you to see it in private, and you nod. 

A security guard comes over to say it's not allowed to park where I have parked, and I say I will be leaving shortly. He mumbles angrily and leaves. We both stand up and I give you a hug. And I don't want to let go. For the past years I have taken pride in learning not to overthink and 'letting go for a living', and I have, that is why we are here, tonight, I let go of my insecurities and dared be happy. I take pride in letting go but I don't want to let go of you. Not now, not ever. I've always been one to cherish human contact and the closeness of you next to me one more time electrifies my skin like a powerline plugged directly into each neuron in my brain.

We both walk away, I get into my car, look back one more time at you walking towards your house, and I drive away into the suburbs and into the night. 

We both know the rest of the story and I will not say more than I need to, only that it was then I learned not all fairy tales have happy endings. Some fairy tales are meant to be enjoyed while they are written until suddenly the pages run out and "The End" must be hastily written on the very last one. It was also then I learned not even words like flames are enough to melt the ice cap that sometimes grows over hearts.

You know, I carry loads of memories of what little we both shared. But perhaps among the most special ones are the day we just drove around and ended up having dinner at Friday's, and the day we ended up at Kloster and while I was ordering the salad I was going to take to my best friend's house, how I kept thinking how your smile glowed under the restaurant's dim lit space. The little quiet moments. At the time, I was too afraid to admit I wanted that feeling of being with you to last forever and beyond the clouds into a million sunrises and sunsets of holding your hand. 

Ours was a story of ups and lows, like a roller coaster, of headspins and plunges, and turns we both certainly did not expect. We both laughed, we both made mistakes. My share of mistakes is what haunts me to this day. I think we both learned from our story. I for one, came to know regret, and these endless nights where my thoughts race like galloping wild horses know how many times I have felt sorry and how I should have done this, or that, differently.

Traces of your smell linger in the fibers of my senses, and how your skin felt intertwined with mine is now just sensory memory my spirit aches on remembering, like a little mark on my soul permanently etched with a white hot iron. Every note of the songs we both used to love and show each other hit my heart like delicious tiny sound bullets I keep torturing my spirit with.

Oh what a terribly beautiful thing our story was, and what a nuclear winter it brought and how it forever changed me, how it undeniably changed us all. Oh how beautifully heartbreak stings, like an all too familiar thorn safely pinned with all its might underneath my sternum.

To the memory of what once was, of what could have been, and what is no more, and to the memory of what we shared, hazy and golden, like a bright Saturday afternoon nap, Dear Young Dreamer.

*

This video was recorded one day before giving you the envelope. And this is what was in it. Like I said back then, I gave you my heart in that envelope. My pictures, both from my phone and my camera, with a mix of words from the songs we (used to) love, some altered to fit better and my own words. Here is everything I ever meant to say.

(Please watch in HD and fullscreen so you can read the book. I know, it takes a while to load) Then you can see more pictures below.


*

the envelope, moments before i delivered it to you

piecing together everything i ever meant to say























stolen homemade waffles and sharpie tattoos at the park

two flat tires at two a.m.