All the Love We Stand to Give
I spoke to an old flame the other day and remembered everything I could’ve had. I saw her on the bus, she was making her way towards a seat. I tapped her on the shoulder as she passed, her face buried in a screenful of emails. When she noticed me, she smiled, sat down, and we picked up where we last left off. Like nothing had changed.
I spoke to an old flame the other day and remembered everything I could’ve had. The writer repeated, over and over in his head. Fingers tinged with cold, skin coarse and dry, the words flowed out of him in spurts, the black ink from his pen finding purchase within the pages of a small, leather-bound journal. His train of thoughts churned forward, unabated. It spiraled outward into a kaleidoscope of mismatched memories and heart-wrenching regret.
We spoke as if nothing had changed. Like we were still together. Still poking fun at one another like seven months and three hundred miles hadn’t separated us, like one of us hadn’t found someone else while the other hoped to rekindle what they believed to be sleeping embers. We spoke as if time had never stopped and that there was nothing more important than that conversation, right then and there.
We spoke, and I daydreamed.
I thought about who I tried to replace you with, and how, she, too, had left. Just as you had. For all the things I had learned about myself in your absence, of all the things I wanted to give to you but gave to someone else — a substitute, really — and all I have now is my indecision and regret, because the same thing that happened with you, happened with her.
It’s funny, in a cosmic sort of way. Man meets woman. Love slowly blossoms. Things happen. They drift apart. They become strangers. She finds someone new and he finds someone else, someone to keep him occupied. Love blossoms once more and twice still it is nipped in the bud. With this new girl, he does all of the same things to her that he did with his first lover, only to realize—after the fact—that he unwittingly fell for what he intended to be a transitory experience, an escapade of character development.
This second woman, someone he thought of as a sort of replacement, leaves him and quickly finds someone else. Failing to learn anything from his experiences the first time around, he kept his mouth shut and his heart sealed when they were together, never telling her about the things he thought and felt. Now he must carry every word he cannot say. Now he is all alone. Bitter, weary of heart, but most of all, morbidly amused by the decisions of an uncaring universe. The world moves unceasingly forward while he torments himself, trying desperately to recall the scent of roses long since wilted. And yet, the sun still rises, the world still turns, and our gardens are still tended to — these must be the most amazing things of all, he thinks.
How ironic, then, that his love would blossom and wither in the season’s icy embrace. Winter is a peculiar time for it. Hearts burn as the world freezes. Frost entombs both men and nature alike. The nights grow longer as darkness comes creeping across the horizon; shadows claim more and more as daylight fades, like the final grains of sand in an hourglass. The winds are just as bitter as the men they harass.
But, as far as creative potential goes, there is never a better time to write. The colder seasons have a certain charm about them: it stirs awake the hack in all of us to put pen to paper. Of course, those who actually write to keep their bodies warm and bellies full know that any time is a fine time to write — inspiration and motivation are fickle mistresses; the time spent chasing after them would be better spent courting self-discipline and routine. For the rest of us, however, the romanticism of locking one’s self away with nothing more than coffee, our laptops, and a handful of notepads is enough to get us in the mood.
We spoke, and I daydreamed. A thousand little moments dashed across my mind, each one screaming in every which way. The way her hands curled close while she slept. The smell of her hair after showering, her body still warm and damp. The soft of her lips, the slight slickness that coated their inner ring. The way her face broke open and how her dimples pooled with joy when she smiled.
Yet, an important distinction must be made in regard to the human condition and its connection to the written word. Emotions themselves don’t necessarily constitute good writing. They have to embody the words on a page, otherwise they remain still, nothing more than dead abstractions. Melancholy is one emotion in particular that always seems to spur great bouts of fiction. Winter, after all, is the season of discontent — aside from the resurgence of seasonal affective disorder, nature’s gradual decline into bitter frost and darkness serves as a perfect metaphor.
But. We all have to wake up some time. The night’s chilly breath wakes me from my stupor. I am no longer drifting aimlessly along a sea of sweet memories; I am cold and here in the present. I am back at a bus stop; the pale-yellow shroud of a streetlight is all that stands between me and total nightfall. I am the only person for miles, I think. Though I know that the countless buildings that surround me must hold some form of life, some quiet essence of humanity, I am all that is here.
It is a state of limbo that distresses me to my very core — to know that you surely must not be alone, but to have no evidence to the contrary, is a deeply unsettling feeling. I can feel the distinctions between my own perception of reality, and the reality that I actually inhabit, slipping, just as the theatre freezes when an actor gives a soliloquy. The fabric of existence is bursting at the seams and all that can be seen behind it is the absurd.
I can’t see any stars because of the light pollution, but I like to think that there is a shining sea of emeralds that is staring back at me. I bask in the glory of their brilliance, praying that, as each ray of light hits me, they etch this moment onto the pages of infinity.
The poignancy of writing is that the written word is a moment in time that demands to be felt in all of its splendid entirety. No good piece of writing ever came from a half-assed feeling and no good writing will ever come of it. The artisans of worldcraft spin their yarns not with threads borne of purple prose or needles soaked with symbolism. Their works are steeped in the cold sweat of sleepless nights and with teardrops so heavy their eyes could not carry them anymore. Their tales are spun with hope embedded within the tapestry and with joy dotting its edges.
Writing is therapy in motion. Its sublimity is derived from the fact that it is nothing short of a gateway into the soul; it is an opportunity for human connection in its purest form, raw feeling and memories — fictious or otherwise — telegraphed from one person to another. This expression of emotion is inherently cathartic, because if we cannot tell those closest to us, at least we can whisper our sorrows on to a page. The manifestation of these thoughts into reality, the transition from the murky waters of the ethereal into that of the physical realm, this is the medicine that soothes a soul’s wounds.
I spoke to an old flame the other day and remembered everything that I could’ve had. Whatever sweet nothings I told myself to move on, whatever explanations I chose to accept to make everything more bearable, it all reduces into simple, unflinching truth: she has someone new and I am to blame for not acting sooner. Whatever inspiration I choose to draw from this, whatever catharsis I hope to experience, all of it trembles in the presence of the unflinching truth. I still think about her while she’s forgotten about me.
How incredible it must be, to write with blood and tears. To stain your paper with the pain that torments your soul is one thing, but to make it good? To make it relatable? To breathe life into it and to make it human? Such is the work of angels, not writers.
My heart is constantly in knots. She lives behind my eyes and deep within the chambers of my heart. Everything I do, all that I see, all of it inevitably reminds me of her. The way in which I perceive the world has been tinted with her presence, and now that she is gone, I recognize little else but reminders of her.
A thousand stories have been written with the ink of a broken heart and a thousand more still wait to be written. To share in the universality of this experience; to know that great men and idiots alike have had their hearts torn to pieces; to know that they were still able to wake up and live another day, or to know that they might have taken their own lives in the name of love; it is as deeply humbling as it is comforting.
It is the most painful thing I have ever experienced. More so than I can even begin to describe; words truly do it no justice. But.
It is so beautiful. Absolutely breathtaking. I am awestruck that people can survive all this agony and heartache and still think the best of others. I am speechless that they are willing to be vulnerable once more, that they can risk having their hearts shattered again into another thousand pieces. It is the most beautiful thing man has discovered, this love of ours. How it can eclipse and swallow the minds of the most stoic and rational men, my God. I have never experienced something so genuine.
This heartbreak of ours, this pain we are inescapably destined to share, it is sublime. Every writer that has ever lived has written about it, just as every writer who will ever live is destined to write about it. Though their experiences are unique and entirely their own, the emotions we share, the things we want to convey, they all inhabit a common ground. To know that giants like Shakespeare and Hemingway and Hypatia and Brontë have felt this pain I feel today… it is awesome.
I am filled with love for people that I don’t know. And I am thankful for being alive to experience this. It hurts. And I don’t know when it will stop. But I am comforted by the totality of it all, because I know that I keep good company.
Albert Camus once wrote, “Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.” It is not enough that we would write about our emotions — we must take the extra step and act upon them. Just as good writing is the product of genuine emotions, so too is good living. Above all else, the fear that lives in our hearts must not outweigh all the love we stand to give.
