Ellen.

I hope you know that my thoughts eternally tick over to the image of you. There, in the folds of my mind, I always imagine you to be happy. And I pray that is the case for you right now. I pray that your head falls restlessly into bed every night, and that each day is as striking as the sunset which closes it. I pray that the universe continues to smile upon you, adorning you with a thousand stars’ songs. Your joyfulness means more to me than my own, and I hope each day awakens you with drenches of sunlight on your face.

And I want you to know that there are days which are lonely and it feels like the drain drops will never cease. There are days filled with desperate bus journeys and endless empty pavements. But I want you to know that there are also many days filled with endless sunshine and golden memories and stomachs bloated with laughter. Those are the days to live for, for these dreary days are but a mere smear of cloud on this vibrant city’s skyline.

(image via tumblr)

Rhythm.

There was the way that she listened to music: she would throw her head back and grin as if her head rested on every last note; she would exhale almost like every last breath weighed of lead, her head recoiling with each plunge of air. Then there was the was the way that his body became alive. His sides pulsated with every riff, his finger tips plunging deep into each beat. Everything about him began to resemble electricity; everything was sharp; everything was dynamic.

And it seemed like light streaked behind each movement, staining the dark night behind around them. What used to be black was now a phosphorescent blur. Shrouded in a halcyon web of sound and movement, it was if every last syllable hurtled them down that rain-soaked motorway.  She continued to keep her dipped chin tilted, feeling the soak of each chord run freely across her skin, pouring deep around her neck and welling into her back. He kept moving, sporadically, but with a fluid rhythm as track after track became the new theme tune .

Much like the way that you would notice other customers in a candlelit restaurant, they were quite aware of each other’s presence, but were equally far away, enveloped by those waves of symphony. Their eyes were dreaming of a far away place; their ears alive and awake in a wave of electronica. So the music continued to well and flood with each muscle clench, reaching a deafening loudness with each heavy exhale.

(image via weheartit)

The last day.

You get a strange feeling when you’re about to leave a place. Like you will not only miss the people you love but you will miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you will never be this way ever again.

Azar Nafisi

Love blindly.

Love blindly and love like you have never loved before. Love with wide eyes and dimpled cheeks and outstretched arms. Love their stories and their hopes and their family’s names. Soak in the sound of their laughter. Sing to their favourite songs. Retell their favourite jokes. Love people like it’s your first love: tell them your secrets, your childhood memories and make plans for the future together. Keep nothing hidden, and delight in what makes them laugh.

Love them even more as you start to uncover their flaws, because you can finally see that they are real. Love their impatience or their closed mind or their lateness. Love the way they can be a snob over music, or coffee, or books. Love them unequivocally, because it’s these little bits which make them so wonderful. Spend evenings listening to their tone deaf singing, and eat their burnt baking, and hold them up when they are too drunk to stand. Continue loving them when they let you down, or make a careless comment, or lie, because people make mistakes, because no one is beyond forgiveness. Throw them parties without expecting thank yous, write them letters when you expect no response, continue hugging them when their arms fall loose. Love them because you know that they are still there, somewhere underneath that mess which has mounted between the two of you.

Continue loving them blindly until they wipe mud on your eyes and you can finally see. Then watch them unfurl into the person you never thought they could be. Love them anyway. Continue to come over to their house, and make them tea, and listen to their problems. Keep laughing at their jokes, even when their voice has lost that melody. Constantly remind yourself of the good times: the folk concerts, or when they held you when everything was breaking down, or becoming part of their family. Keep loving them and keep making excuses until you finally stare at their face and realise how ugly they have become.

And then, I don’t know how to go on. Do you keep living for the days when the sun shines on their face; when the person you used to know knocks on your door? Do you continue to love the person that they used to be; the person that they claim to be? Or should you stop waiting for them to come home?

Because, either way, it’s going to hurt.

 

On letting go.

Some vaults are better left locked. Some bridges are better burnt. Some people are better left as an idea than a reality.

Sometimes it’s better to roll out of bed and roll away from them. Sometimes you need to pick up those memories scattered across your bedroom floor and place them in a long-forgotten drawer.  Sometimes it’s healthier to leave a full stop rather than continuing indefinitely.
And it will hurt. It will most go against every last gripping sinew, but you still have to just let go. The problem isn’t with them, but with you; you created mountains out of spider webs and you buried all your treasure in a graveyard.

So put away Saturday evenings driving though diamond lit cities and forget smoky laughs. Forget dancing around the kitchen and film-stained grins. Put them away out of reach until you can one day open that box without losing your heart to the floor.

But let them know that you love them. Let them know that they are more wonderful, more precious, than the world itself. Let them know that you will always be there, dusk or dawn. Let them know that you are going to be back, but just not now.

Say that you will miss every passing clock tick, but you will be with them soon.

(image via http://s5.favim.com/orig/54/airplane-clouds-plane-sky-Favim.com-520300.jpg)

Destination.

I looked up to the sky and praised Him, because I finally made it here.
After years of constant star gazing, and months of unshakable hope, and weeks of constant calender watching, I was here: I was finally home.

No longer would I sit in a cold room drenched in loneliness, and no longer would I crave the warmth of an poisoned friendship. No longer would doubt and insecurity coarse my veins, wrenching my heart into a static sickness. No longer would numbness become reality and no longer would tears be the water to wash in.

So the clock finally demanded that my time had come, and I moved far away. I left the years of disappointment and confusion and the streets of dead-ends and lost dreams. As tyres hurtled me to bright lights and high hopes, I stripped myself of those half hearted goodbyes which cracked my heart into such fragile pieces. The road was long, and the journey was as difficult as the prelude, but it eventually led me here.

It led me here, to you. All of you. It led me to sunshine soaked afternoons lying in peace, and embraces filled with honesty. No longer did my name feel unsafe on another’s tongue, and no longer did I lay my head in depths of fear. I was, well and truly, home after years of fighting for it.

And though being home meant saying goodbye, and although my love is found on the other side of the country, I still have hope. I have the hope which made me survive the deepest depths of insecurity; the nights where hopelessness and the gripping sense of depression wouldn’t leave my bones. Because if I could muster myself through that, the distance between us are is a mere breeze in these sails.

So I stand here in this room, filled with faces carved with happiness. And though most of you don’t know it, I thank you all every single day. I thank you for never letting me let another tear fall on my pillow, and I thank you that a crowded room is no longer something so deeply lonely.

Thank you for making this long awaited destination somewhere I never wish to leave.

The fall from summer.

I know that you say that you are excited for change, and I know that you say that you are happy the way things are, but I know how easy you find it to hide your feelings until you come undone in the solace of your bedroom.

And I know that you want it to be summer forever, no matter how excited you say you are about moving away. I know that autumn strikes fear into your heart, because you believe autumn means change, and change means distance and a broken heart and missing what is right here in front of you. But darling, please stop living your life in the summer. Stop waiting for sunny days to free yourself and stop waiting for the sunshine to fix your problems.

Because the summertime isn’t real. Although summer makes things appear brighter, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are better. Because easier is not better. Easier is lazier and laziness is doing nothing; achieving nothing. You were created to do so much more than stagnation and a tradition of a wrongly fitting pattern, no matter how comfortable and beautiful it feels.

In the autumn, things happen: you happen. Contrary to popular belief, autumn is where you blossom and winter is where you flourish. It is in the bleakness when you truly find yourself, and it’s when you cut that tie when you can take your shoes off and run in the grass and scream to your heart’s content. Here, you are too strangled. Here, you are told what fits and what to put in your head and you are deceived into thinking who you should love. Not because you don’t know any better, but because the sunshine is a cunning mistress and makes the deepest wound appear the friendliest face.

Run away into those autumn leaves. Let autumn’s musty breath change you: change everything. Let it settle in your relationships, in your eyes, in your heart, on your windowsill. Let it make nothing appear the same. Then come back. Come back with fearsome tenacity and knowledge and strength in the fact that you no longer need to rely on fading blonde curls and summer dresses to make your day a good one.

Liverpool.

I didn’t know what to expect as the train hurtled me far into this western corner, but as my clumsy feet found themselves standing between your golden-ruffled grin and your freckle-kissed blue eyes, I suddenly found myself home.

This was not because any of these streets held any familiarity, and not because these crowds held any long-lost faces. I was home because I finally felt like there were no longer fault lines or hard edges or a squeezed fit: here, belonging felt effortless. With the pair of you beside me, this foreign city furled into a place where my name didn’t feel strange; I felt safe, and welcomed and loved.

And the feeling of home grew as every minute passed: as I made friends within your friends and shared in your smiles; as I learned your families’ names and revelled in their laughter; as I cooked and skipped and tripped beside you in each passing moment. And, for that, I could not begin to express my gratitude. For so long I had always felt content in half-hearted friendships and ill-fitting matches, and it was more than a blessing to taste the friendships I had longed for so long: to finally find a home when for so long I was trapped in empty streets and cul-de-sacs.

Because that’s the thing about home: it is far from bricks and mortar and a postcode. Home is knowing that your name is safe in someone’s mouth and home is no longer having to work. Home is no longer having to construct a perfect image. Home is reality and laughter and watching you wrestle your sister over photographs you’d rather left unseen.

And though train track wrenches us miles apart, I have never felt closer home. And though watching you hurtle far away, back into that western corner, heavied my heart like nothing else, I could not be happier. Because of you, and our entirely serendipitous friendships, I finally know that I belong.

(Photograph: Alamy, sourced via The Guardian)

Ravage.

Come away with me.

We’ll search every sea and scour the furthest land.

Come away with me.

We’ll watch the moon lift every last drop of light and laugh until dreams heavy our heads.

Come away with me.

We’ll forget the past and our played out passions and we’ll conquer the world again.

Come away with me, please.

So that you will no longer be lost. Come away with me so that you can be you, and I can be me and so that I won’t have lost you. Come away with me so you’ll be here, and not there and safe back in the memories I used to know. Come away with me and be the person I thought you were. Please don’t be a figment or an ideal or a worn-out name. Don’t be silence on the telephone or an uncomfortable smile or hurt-stained pixel.

Come away with me and be you.

Be safe and be home and be everything I wish you could be. Be the open and honest and flawed and wonderful person that you are. Be the person who I confided everything in and be the person who I looked to as my compass. Be my Wednesday afternoons and my night-time confidant. Be the person I believed in more than anything.

Come away with me and escape this all-consuming town.

We can leave behind the mess and the madness and I can still look into your eyes and see my best friend smiling back. You are so much more and so much deeper and so much more lovely than the girl I see before me in this crowded room. You are so much brighter than this faceless crowd.

Be here, because I don’t know where I am now without you.

(image sourced via tumblr)

Dusk.

As we watched the sun sink her head into dreamy depths, we turned our heads east and headed straight for the grey clouds outlining the border. And though sadness filled our hearts, it did not eclipse them; for the very light we beheld and carried within us radiated enough hope to keep us burning. And with that, our beams burned brighter than the sun’s could ever muster. It was the week filled with tear stained clutches; it was the week filled with serendipitous joy. It was a week stained with both metaphorical and metaphysical thunderstorms and sun-rays. It was a week torn with heartbreaking questions and unyielding faith in equal measures. It was dream and reality all the same.

And as the dust rolled us down the highway, we gave the purple hills their final bow and praised them for their constant vigilance. And then we kept our eyes forward.  We sang songs and shouted and prayed, for we had hope. We had strength and trust and promise, even as the misty curtain parted to make way for us.

This was one of those rare golden moments which filled our lungs and kissed our eyes and laced our lips. Who could ever stop us? Not the becoming darkness, nor any demon, nor any deepest depth.

All was well.