Rainstorm

I was going to write an amazing story about a strangely warm, overcast summer afternoon, a sudden downpour of cold, clean rain, and two unknowing lovers discovering a hidden passion hovering barely beyond their met gaze. It was going to be based on fact and assumption, on truths and mere hopes, and on the idea that even in the worst of times, there can be best of times. Sincere conversations and stinging, painful realizations always manage to destroy whatever scrap of happiness may exist, replacing it instead with lumps of coal and emptiness.

At times like this, I don’t want to write. Honestly, I just want to lie down, close my eyes, and sleep everything away, but I know that if I do, nothing will ever come from this pain. No phoenix will rise from ashes if the fire is doused after ignition, and no good will come from heartache if heartache is just pushed down into the stomach and digested. I am in love, and it is the only truth I can hang on to right now. I am in love with a woman who does not want to love me back. She does love me, both she and I know it, but she will not let herself love me, believing that somehow it will make her whole.

It was a single line that broke me. It was not the straw that broke the camel’s back, and as far as metaphors go, it was altogether more contrived. It was the boulder that broke the camel’s back after every other stick, stone and straw had missed. It was thus:

“I want to be your friend. I want so badly to be your friend. I just never want to be in a relationship with you.”

Sadly enough (and as pitiful as it may sound), that was not the exact phrase that crushed me, but merely a paraphrasing of a dagger. The real line, the one involving her lips against mine and something inversely pristine, was lost between my heart stuttering, my ventricles collapsing, a bundle of repressed sniffles and sobs, and a mind racing with every plausible permutation summing to an undo. Funny, no matter how hard I mash Ctrl+Z, the only thing that happens is words disappearing. The attached emotions aren’t as attached as one is lead to believe.

All the way home, an hour and a quarter spent in contemplation for the perfect opening line to my amazing lunch (which just so happened to be: “She smiled at me between sips at a straw from across the wrought iron table sitting warm, not from the sun, but from a beautifully threatening overcast sky, outside of the small café, empty sandwich trays scattered about in such a way to indicate an amazingly relaxed and surprisingly romantic lunchtime rendezvous. “), I drove with the same dumbstruck smile plastered on my face. I knew we had a chance—after all, we both acknowledged the fact that a spark was definitely present at that same instant; however, it seems as if the things I know don’t count for much more than a speck of dust amidst a tidal breeze.

What I really want you to know is that happiness does exist in my life. I see little peaks where the graph pulls itself up out of the swamp of unhappiness for long enough to wave a short plateau before plunging back down, but at the end of the day, I’m alone, depressed, and empty. I want to sleep this pain into storage, opting to worry about it at a later date. Plus, I really don’t want to write anything right now.