We kiss

...like children, dry lips, softly.

I sense you next to me in the cinema, we are in the back row, nobody can see us, it is in the daytime but we've sought out the dark. Dust dances in the flickering light just above our heads, suspended in an imaginary road leading somewhere, anywhere.

You are holding my right hand in yours, you look at me and smile, and this is when I kiss you.

I wasn't planning to, not now, but maybe all along, all these years that we have known each other.

I steal that kiss, just as this time is stolen, and we are sitting in the back so that nobody will spot us, we both know this, though neither of us has said so.

We think the same and say it, all the time. But this time, neither of us does. Some things don't bear being reminded about.

And this is why our first kiss is one between two children, because that is what I remember, you as a child, though of course we thought we were adults back then, and we kissed like adults, greedily, blindly.

As you kiss me back, the memory is buried at the back of my dirty laundry, so many garments waiting to be washed, maybe tomorrow, next week, just not right now.

But I find you, the taste of you in my mouth has been somewhere all along, and I am thinking, I could get used to you again.

Sometime soon, the lights will come on and we will go on as if nothing has happened. But I know you are looking at me when you think nobody can see it.

Fallout

It is raining outside today. Large drops falling almost straight, hardly any wind, and the harbor is rippled only by the impact of water on water.

The city is still sleeping, though I hesitate to call it a city, because it is not much more than a town really.

I have thought about whether I feel lonely. Whether I always felt lonely and thereby became a serial monogamist. It is weird. I never planned on having a boyfriend when I was younger. Sure, I liked guys but I've never really liked committment.

And I've never managed to form a relationship form which I got as much or more than I gave. With J and I, I guess we both gave more than we got. Our relationship turned into some kind of vortex that just sucked the life out of us both. The kind you read about in romatic novels, at the beginning, before the heroine realises that actually, the dashing guy next door is her true love. Like the opposite of gestalt theory, the whole is lesser than its parts.

So what am I afraid of? I, who barely know what fear is, unless it slaps me across the face with a fist, which it actually only did once for a brief moment during this last trauma.

My mother, always the pragmatic, told me several times to stop calling people, because she worried that they "would get tired of me". Experience of course showed that people didn't get tired of me, though they probably got used to me showing initiative and therefore rarely rang me first.

And maybe they didn't ring me first because there was something aloof about me, I had no fear. I might say no.

But I remembered my mother's words, and now I am worried of getting in touch with people, even though I do it, I don't feel entirely comfortable with it, except with my few very close friends whom I know I could call at any time of the day and they really would not mind.

Then there is the moving. I have moved around so much that I have never had time to settle into someone's social group. I am always welcome, never expected. Have I moved so much because I was afraid that if I tried to settle in, I wouldn't be accepted? I don't think so. I think this is just what I've had to sacrifice on the altar of my restlessness. Among other things. Though in a sense one could also say that at least they never have time to get tired of me.

So therefore, having a partner was always comforting to me, to my insecurity and partially my laziness.

It is fantastic to always have someone there, someone who will entertain me or that I can engage with my random thoughts about life, someone to have sex with. Sex on tap is extremely underrated, and I can tell I'm getting pretty cranky now though I'm too lazy and still feeling too tender to do anything about it.

I don't actually mind being on my own. I just mind not knowing that someone won't come rushing to my side the second I do.

Remembering

Slowly I am moving out of this numbness that's pretty much constituted all of my emotional life for the last month or so.

I remember what it can be like to wish to wake up in someone elses arms, to actually yearn for social contact with friends, to make playlists in Spotify just because you can.

There should always be an ex to fall back on. Just not the one you just broke up with, obviously.

The insane thing about being in love is the inevitability you start to think applies to you being with the object of your affections. It feels like it must happen to such an extent that you think it will happen. This is clearly delusional, but it is such a lovely flight of fancy, such an incredible high, that it's difficult to resist.

I've stolen enough moments with my "one who got away" that I now remember what it's like. It's a dangerous game, but what is life for, if not for playing...

Better late than never

I've finally gotten around to painting my corridor. My parents came over and helped, but honestly, I did at least 20% of it myself.. The red heart of the flat has been obliterated by white and lilac. I love it already, and have taken to keeping the lights out there lit at all times so I can glance out of the living room door and admire our work.

Obviously I've suddenly noticed all the other things in the flat that need painting.. Uh oh.


Before: A lovely deep red which is probably nice for curtains if you have a Victorian hunting lodge, not a 2 square metres corridor...  
 

After: Niiiiice! Lilac to go with my new green spring coat from Ted Baker. I had to scour London to find it, but it was worth every minute of "hard work"!

All time love

Spring has finally arrived, and with it, my all time love. He puts a smile on my face, and I feel seen, heard, validated, in the way I always do when we meet.

I will not act on this, I don't think there is any need to. Our train passed the station a long time ago and for whatever reason we never got on it.

It is simply good to find that I can still fall stupidly in love, that my heart is not broken for ever, that things are fixable.

The fact that I have fallen in love before does not mean my quota of bliss has been spent. Past performance is a guarantee of future income.

Words escape me

It's weird, this feeling after a breakup of being totally discombobulated. Language is leaving me, as at least I thought Annie Lennox sang at some point, though she might in fact have sung something completely different as this was back in the day when I knew most English language lyrics only phonetically.

Being on my own, I really feel lost for words. I guess you might have to know me in person to know what a monumentous statement that actually is. I am the girl that talks. I occasionally listen if I get paid to do so, but usually words just pour out of me until most people wish it had stopped a long time ago.

But now, I can't find them. I don't feel like talking, I don't feel like writing. I know I am not very good at emotion. As my best friend said as I was visiting her and her kids at Easter, I talk about my feelings a lot, but I don't really express them.

I haven't cried for over a week. It is odd. I am sure there are tears there, just behind my eye sockets, lurking in my sinuses maybe, just waiting to be cried. But they don't come. Like the words, they seem stuck.

Maybe a breakup throws you back to some pre-verbal stage of grief or confusion. You have to go though the developmental stages again at breakneck speed (physical withdrawal at your needs no longer being met ==> terrible twos and anger ==> learning new stuff at school age ==> Ready to fall in love again head over heels like a teenager ==> Mature relationship. Hopefully).

I don't know when I'll learn to put together sentences properly again, with more than two words in them. I keep dropping out mid-sentence at the moment. But things are progressing. This week, I'm painting the entryway. Next week, talking again.