2004-08-01
It Wasn't More Than A Year Ago...
hearing: It's Wasting Me Away - The Electric Soft Parade
reading: Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
wearing: makeshift leg warmers
A certain memoir:
...I always thought that of all of them, he was the safe one. For so long, I believed he was the only one I would never become emotionally tangled with.
I thought the barriers between us too numerous and insuperable. Age was the main factor of course, but even without, I did not consider any aspect of my character to be intriguing or attracting to him. I believed myself a little child while he was an adult. I assumed he saw things that way too, and that he always would. I had always thought of him as my superior, a superior who naturally recognized this and bemusedly followed the actions of the awkward inferior I was. A king and a peasant, an angel and a mortal, a father with his child...
I was then confident that I could slowly open my heart and my confidence to him and that I was completely safe to do so... I naively figured as things strengthened and went deeper, all that would come, was a close father/daughter-esque relationship...an innocent, honorable mentorship was all I blindly foresaw.
Anything different, more intimate, more violent and passionate, did not touch my wildest dreams. I thought it was utterly impossible for anything more to develop, and the even further off claims of love...like that...it never crossed my mind. I did not expect to feel that for anyone for years and years yet. And to think of feeling that for him was unfathomable...unbelievable...'twas something I'd confidently say, would never happen...
But that's all been turned upside down. Everything I was so sure of for so long was pulled right out from under my feet.
I was not a child.
He was not my superior.
I was in love first, he soon followed.
I let the...well, for lack of a better word, "feelings" linger for a long time, unchecked by myself. I thought them harmless at first, and considered them of no danger. The barriers were still there, and I was still very well aware of them.
The tricky thing is though, hearts do not pay any heed to epidermal barriers which the mind is so well aware of. They are no obstruction to a beating heart, which will surpass all of them and only come through beating stronger.
I didn't want to believe that though. I had always been a very analytical, calculating creature. My feelings had always fallen under my rule, and I didn't think this would be any different or harder. I thought I had my heart on an iron leash and I could yank it back to my side at the slightest tug.
But when I felt things were excessive and that it was time for my heart to return, I tugged, and an empty chain came back to my side.
The panic was immediate. I scampered to chase down my heart and to punish it by beating dead every twinkle of feeling in it, but to no avail.
I think that I would have had an easier time of it, to change the grass's color to lavendar, or the sun's color to hot pink.
But I could fake it. I could make mockeries of the sun and grass on paper in the colours I chose. I could, and did, color pictures of words to defy what went on inside of me. Outwardly, I would disdain, even if inside my heart fluttered like a butterfly and clamoured to get out and...
Let us not digress though in a reflection of the passions. Those are private matters.
As I realized the futility of my lies, and how weak they were getting to withhold my heart from scampering to his, I grew even more afraid.
I was standing at a fork in the road. A fork with many prongs. I was enmeshed in a darkness of mind, and a lost confusion. I had never met a road like this before, had never imagined meeting one. I knew not which fork to take. I shuddered and cried in the darkness, roving my eyes about wildly, trying to catch a glimpse of him whom I knew was nearby. What were the extents of his thought? I waited on him to pull out scraps of a map which would show us which way to take.
For by now, we could not back track. The road was closed to us. It would be an impossibility by now to undo everything that had been said and done. The only path now, was forward, there had been enough of stumbling backwards in the dark, for that had only led us to turn ourselves about and run faster forward.
Forward...the only way to go... but there were different forwards on this path. Some in separation...
Ours lay in...
Here the memoir cuts out.
A note was enclosed with this section of the memoir, which requested readers to remember, that in situations like this, the guidance of the Lord was extremely necessary when both parties were Christian. As in this case they were. The author is silent on whether these two sought out the Lord to light their path, although we can only assume, and dearly hope that they did, for then, their path would be least disastrous. To keep the Lord as the focal point is to have everything fall into place peacefully behind.