One minute, the world seems to gleam like a pearl, perfectly cupped in your hands.

The next, it crumbles to sand and leaks through your fingers.
The next, you clasp at nothing.

An Essay on Friendship and Love

Where would we be now Darling, if we'd found each other first. 
- Good Charlotte 

This blog is not for semi-cryptic emotional outpourings of melodrama, and I sincerely apologize to my future self (and any other readers of said blog) for this anomaly.

I don't believe that it is quite possible to turn around one morning and decide that you see a person in a completely different way. I believe in feelings, in sparks. Two people who have known each other for so long cannot help but establish familial feelings, worse than hate or pity in deterring love. For me, any initial romantic feelings had been but circumstantial and fleeting at best.

 A friend once said, and I concur, that the only difference between a deep friendship and a deep love is sexual attraction. But which is to come first? Perhaps, then, when the first condition has been fulfilled, will the second necessarily follow? Or will it be wishful thinking on the other's part. A friend is a friend for life, and too often than not, a lover is but a wistful dream th`at leave us shaken and brittle upon waking. Upon attaining deep friendship then, what is the justification for wanting the latter? Amusement? Physical satisfaction? Possession? Love is born from deep seated trust, deep seated admiration and passion. The latter is the only one which cannot be nurtured over time. Or have we simply been unable to recognize it?

It is difficult to learn to see in another way. There are many doubts, and many inhibitions. I know the pains that must burn through your veins sometimes; I have had the poison in mine too. I know, and I cannot unknowingly pass into ignorant bliss. This makes me not what I am, but someone baser. In you, I had seen the potential to transcend beyond the parts of me that were driven by meaner impulses. Or is that consideration purely egotistical on my part?

You, too. You have moments of loneliness. Perhaps you merely see potential where you wish to see them. You may be rapt by the idea that the one who understand you has been here all along, and you've merely learnt to recognize it. Maybe you've simply resorted to settling for something more realistic, leaving behind the wild fantasies of childhood, thinking that I am the answer for that deeper bond you search for, simply because I have been here. Consequently then, I would only ever be loved as an idea. So many fears...

It is as if our lives were contained in storybooks. We had started to read one, gotten about a paragraph in, before digressing to another wrought with the same characters. Then, during the crux of the second, we had again resumed the second paragraph of the former, trying to block out our assumptions and start anew. You have a past as intimately entwined as I. How do we put our insecurities behind and live beyond that? The shadows of the past will forever stalk our actions, and already, we see vague, dismal mists in every corner. Suspicion and disappointment already colours our darting glances, clouding our midnight reveries and haunting our silent fears. You possess not the affirm confidence I had so admired, and I have watched you shrink into a shell. This identity is strange to me. Be callous, be rude, be who you once were and I will like you the better for it.

In the end, I am still left with more questions than from which I had started out. Will the lessons of leaping before looking be forever attached to this 'leap of faith'? Will we part breathless, friendless and shattered? If so, who will you or I turn to then?

And there she is, behind every closed door. 

Is this what growing up is about?
Realizing there is no eternity, no certainty, no room for promises,
Only maybes, what if's
and we can only promise to do our best in the situation
Perhaps it's about the changes
Change is the only certainty
And living with and despite it
Losing security, and be okay with it
To feel five and twenty five within seconds.
Just let it wash over and let it be.
Struggle along the best we can
block out the noise of failures.
It's a choice between ignorance or floundering in the dark...

I'm not sure I want to grow up.

Inhibitions. Indecisions. Visions, revisions. The next minute will reverse.

Cycling. Circling. Spiraling retraces. The next the mirror of the first. 

Closed doors. Shattered panes. Painted windows on empty floors. 

Up. Down. Left then right. The dancing compass. Bending halls. 

Long for days of iced cream. Blue jeans. Dreaming in musty bookstore stalls.
Big screens, small rings. Dresses for that summer ball.
Blink and now I'm watching summer fall.
Back to the promise of forevermore.

It's a daydream, one way street, so tie your knot to another door.
Wishes, kisses, go back to the one you'd left before.
Walk away from those never-ending calls. 

Montage

A chronology: meeting between two strangers

I. A Movie
Soft, dark shades. The previous disgraces. A hard day.
I ran, and ran, and ran.
Collapsed into the open arms of friends, and was suddenly surrounded by warmth.
Your smiling face from across the room. Puppy piles and puppy love.

II. A Taste
Lingering thoughts. Endless, endless thoughts and words that could not tumble out fast enough.
The path to truth never did run smooth, more like. I was muffled by the excitement, and my reason washed away with the tide. Thoughtless. Maybe I would've seen...

III. A Simplification
Blue skies, bright eyes, and all the wonderful feelings of freedom. A day without a clock reminding us of the things we need to do. Sunset, seaside, songs that we sing. Simplified.

IV. A Complication
Robert Frost: 'The Road Not Taken'. I'm buffeted on all directions. You don't understand. Nonetheless, we hold on. Hand in hand, we will stand strong.

V. A Photograph
Lights, night, harbourside. Dreams that make us feel alive. Throw into careless abandon, just one more time.

VI. A Scene
Golden light. Green grass. Blue skies. Whispered words, hand in mine. This clipping we took from a drama and pasted into our lives. Twenty minutes should never end. In that moment, we needn't die. Gentleness.

VII. A Moment
Sigh, cry, blame the fates if we must. Nothing's going to change and it's all begun to rust. Days, nights, blend into a palette of grey. But that's okay. Out there is the promise of sometime and some day. Until then I have the strength of words and wishes from far far away. I'll be far far away, and you won't stay.

VIII. A Future
Unknown

________________________________________________

All that separates a stranger from an acquaintance is a greeting.
All that separates an acquaintance from a friend is one trusting moment.
All that separates a friend from family is shared blood.
All that separates a friend from a lover is a kiss.
All that separates you and I are time for all these things.

The weight of our loss drags behind us, while the memory clings on. We trawl through the atmosphere as we weep, as we walk. The black feather dips sadly to the clop of the horses hooves. The tar dipped carriage ever squeaking in the cold of the morning. The air catches our breath and freezes it, as if time itself halted for this moment. Give us a little more time to catch our pain and absorb it, instead of letting it wreck havoc in our lives.

The cold November morning was glazed with frost.
We lowered a black box into the ground, and then covered it.