It's like when someone slams on the breaks too hard. When someone breaks the silence too soon. When you wake up from a dream, and you don't understand, how everything could have looked so real, but not be.
It leaves you dislocated from your body, leaving it limp and powerless. It feels like your lungs are being picked out of your body, with cold, loathsome fingers leaving a sickly wound you quietly try to heal - holding your breath more out of inability than suspense - before it shows on your face how truly uncomfortable you are.
It's the feeling that follows the one of overwhelming suspense, when you're waiting to hear what you've wanted to hear for a very long time. When you lean in closer, and open your eyes wider, as if these gestures will encourage someone to say something you've been quietly repeating in your head, over and over, hoping it'll finally find a home on their lips.
Because maybe once you hear it, you'll believe it.
I talked about this once. I've probably talked about this more than once. The idea of grand gestures. And how sometimes, we need them. Like vitamin D and closeness and skin and blood. We need grand gestures because people need to know they're being thought about.
"There is only one thing in life worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Oscar Wilde.
I admire the go-getters. The go-get-her's. The email writers... No, the email senders. The 18-hour-drivers and the idea of flowers. I like the people who start conversations because something needs to be said. The people who hug tighter and whisper. Whisper anything. People who cry when they feel something.
Because feeling something is infinitely more beautiful than not feeling anything.
I won't tell you what to say. You already know what to say. You have the words. Find them. And when you do, keep them on the tip of your tongue. All the way there. Until you close the door. She'll come running, you won't be able to help smiling, and then you let them fall out. In no particular order. She'll put them together.
Don't spend a week arranging the sentence. That's not what matters.
"Sweet nothings are things penguins say." Me.
We say things that would have terrified me, not too long ago. Things that might have left me jaded and coy. But they don't anymore. Now I just hope they're true. I hope we're not crazy, or blind, or naive. I hope we're not a statistic. I want to be the exception.
You know I've always hated being average.
Then again, I would never call this average.
I want brick walls, and wood under my feet. I want leather and iron and a piano. I want teacups and big windows. I want a garden. And I want basil. And I want to keep it alive. Parsley. Hot ovens and fireplaces and oven mitts with elephants on them. There will always be epoxy nearby. I want moccasins. I want speakers and pictures. A long, oval mirror. And a globe. I want a lock on every door. I want homemade canned peaches. Using my mother's recipe. Candles. Ones I won't be heartbroken to burn. A cupboard strictly for tea. I want a place for my necklaces, and lots of books. I will always have lemons. I want cork boards and chalk boards and post it notes. There will always be cats and a vase of flowers. I want beautiful plates. I don't know why I want beautiful plates, but I do. Oh, I do.
It's all going to be okay, right?
Does it even matter?
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