thecockycockless

She toys with the idea of picking a feeling she's had, and changing her whole life's direction to follow it. There've been a few situations, many even, when feelings and thoughts have aligned, and the universe has opened up opportunities for her to grasp - there for the blink of an eye, or sometimes seconds, but then gone. Gone because the thoughts have changed, scared to remain in that pure form, interrupted by other ones; darker, even more frightened ones. Ones that hold her back. That make her break eye contact or laugh nervously, waving a hand dismissingly. But now that is about to change. She will honour one of those truths she's barely touched, yet feels her body yearn for.

 

So she rents out her flat, quits her job and gets on a plane. Finds out an address, waves down a cab, knocks on a door. It is opened by a married man, whose wedding pictures she's seen on Facebook, together with pictures of the children she glimpses behind him, older now but still too young to understand what will happen during the next hours. She pushes past him, only allowed to do so because he vaguely remembers meeting her once or twice before. She ignores the children and finds their mother in the kitchen. Has the time to think "I remember when our idea of cooking was boiling pasta and adding five types of cheese" before she takes her by the hand and pulls her out to the backyard, somehow realizing that even though she wants to drag this woman back into the waiting cab, she might not want to leave before saying goodbye to her soon-to-be ex husband, and making some sort arrangement for the kids.

"It's a bit late", she offers, as a recognition to the utter shock on the other's face. "But I'm here now. Now I know that I want what we always skirted around, those hazy years, living together. That night, I know you remember it, because it's when time should be counted from. When you said those beginnings of sentences that you wanted me to finish, and I knew how to, but I didn't dare. I'm sorry for how afraid I was, how I listened to everything but the feelings you evoked in me. But don't you see, it was because it was too good to be true? We have been taught that fairytales don't exist, that people are out to get you and that we can't live on love alone. But if that is true then explain to me how we survived those years, in that misery of a flat we called our home? And explain to me why I've had the growing feeling of not living since we parted. And explain to me how I will survive if you don't come away with me this second. I know I'm late, but I also know I'm right in trusting that the strength of what we felt for each other, that was too complex for me to fully understand, has lived on in you as it has in me. I can't say I love you, because the word is a joke in the face of what I feel. We won't need to try and put it into words, I can feel it pulsate loud enough through me. I think it originates from your hand in mine. Just tell me you will follow me to the end of the world, and that you will allow me to follow you to the end of everything."

 

But of course, it is a bad idea.