Over you

Stephen King once wrote: ‘Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away.. and in the end.. there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometime we lose them there again.’

I still breathe, I still smile, I still live.
Not too long ago, I thought that to be impossible. I couldn’t believe life to be worth a thing without loving her. Even so, I forced myself to leave her life…knowing deep down she’ll never really leave me. I got lost quite a few times, and I’m not proud of certain things I’ve said and done.
But now after all this time, I’ve slowly started picking up the pieces of my broken heart. I’m discovering parts of myself I thought were lost, and I’m trying to fit them in the right place.
Just the other day I found myself answering: “great” when someone asked me how I was…and for the first time in quite a long while, I wasn’t lying.

At least the ancient kings are there to guide me…

John Mayer wrote:

I’ve been thinking about something lately…Imagine this:

You’re on an airplane, sleeping with your head against the window, your heart set on being home this time three hours from now. All of a sudden, something goes very wrong. The plane stops moving across the air and instead starts falling through it. The lights are flickering and the movie is skipping. The plane dips hundreds of feet in seconds, and the yellow cups fall from the ceiling. They’re a brighter shade of yellow than you remember, because unlike the demonstration, these cups have never been handled before. “Flight attendants take your seats now”, you hear, the pilot’s voice trembling over a cacophony of alert tones. You get that smell in the bridge of your nose like you’ve just been hit with a football. That’s what the fear smells like. The plane is going down.

Four more drastic drops in under a minute. People are crying. For all the folklore about how your life flashes before your eyes, you’re remarkably fixed on one vision - your parents. They’re sleeping at this very moment, in a bedroom so quiet they can hear the clock in the kitchen. And you can see them, clear as can be. You wish you could see a playground or a first kiss, but all you can see is your parents sleeping. Huh. Well, that’s that.

Several long minutes go by. Then, all at once, the lights come back on and the plane somehow rights itself. Some people cheer, but most people cry harder. The plane lands about an hour later, and as soon as you feel that touch down - hell, even when you were within 50 feet of the ground and could still technically survive a fall - you realize that however you brokered the deal between you and God worked; you’ve just been granted life in overtime.

Here’s the question: what do you change? Whom do you call that you haven’t spoken to in years? Whom do you realize has been toxic to your heart and drop with surprising ease? What trips do you cancel, and what trips do you book? What can’t you be bothered with anymore? What’s the new you like?

Think about that, and then ask one more question. Why not just change it all right now?

Not today

When Norah and I fight, it mostly gets quite intense, burning and itching in places you forgot about they even existed.
So I guess tonight I could once again write a story out of self-pitty, about how much it hurts, letting go.
Stories of a thousand rainy days, filled with tears.

I’m not going to.
I’m done.

The tide that left, and never came back

“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune. But omitted, and the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves — or lose the ventures before us.”
– William Shakespeare, “Julius Ceaser”

Walking away from your weakness isn’t something you’ll be able to do at once.
It will be a long journey that leads you through the barren deserts of your mind and soul.
And, trust me, it’s easy to lose your way there…and you might even try and lead yourself back to the place you’ve known for so long, even if that place seemed long lost before you left it.
There’s a road you’ll have to walk alone, with not one single soul at your side.
Because you said she was everything, and now you’re leaving everything behind.
Do not look back, because you have been here, and you know here is not where you want to be.
Just take your time with it, taste the peace and silence, let it linger.

Invictus

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

– William Ernest Henley

An unexpected answer

John Steinbeck once wrote: ‘Change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass.’

Staying home alone on a saturdaynight, I put on a DVD of the CW’s “One Tree Hill” I taped a while ago. Just to take my mind off of the struggles in my brain, and maybe because watching Bethany Joy Lenz-Galleoti is a visual treat after a week of troubles, as well.

Five minutes past midnight, Norah sends me a text message: ‘I don’t want to fight, I just want to know why…Sweet dreams, Norah’
Why? Her question makes me think. Why do feelings change? Why do we say: ‘I’ll wait forever,’ and mean it, but still stop waiting after two years? I don’t know…but she’s right, she deserves answers.

An answer comes, from the most unlikely source, as my attention gets drawn to my television.

and so I use the words that expressed exactly what I have been feeling, being the man on the side:
“…but it never seemed like you missed me, and I guess because of that I stopped missing you…”
and Norah messages me back, as if she’s watching the very same DVD:
“…Adam…I’m sorry.”

Yeah, me too…

We might as well be strangers

Katherine Anne Porter once said; ‘There seems to be a kind of order in the universe…in the movement of the stars and the turning of the Earth and the changing of the seasons. But human life is almost pure chaos. Everyone takes his stance, asserts his own right and feelings, mistaking the motives of others, and his own.’

My words were mere formality, an acknowledgment of a decision long made in the corners of my mind.
“I’m sorry Norah, but I just cannot do this anymore, this just doesn’t feel right any longer…”
That’s all I could come up with. Two years in which not a single day had passed without my heart calling out to hers, two years that had been anything but ordinary. Two years that didn’t get the break-up-line they deserved.
I guess the words I chose to call things over were just as helpless as I was.

No fight, no questions, not one single tear.

I don’t know what I expected, but I did expected her to care. She remained careless, as she had been so many times before…She nodded and said goodbye, argueing she didn’t felt like talking about it.

One might say it’s easier to leave than to be left behind. Perhaps.
But sometimes leaving means being left behind too.

How much it hurts

Stephen King once wrote: ‘Time takes it all, whether you want it to or not. Time takes it all, time bears it away.. and in the end.. there is only darkness. Sometimes we find others in that darkness, and sometime we lose them there again.’

I don’t know wether falling in love with Peyton, the fund-raising-girl, will be my saving grace. We’ve called almost every day since last week, and really, she’s awesome, and remembering that kiss makes me tremble. But every day that passes that feeling fades a little more.

And then there’s Norah, the girl I’ve loved for two years…the girl I imagined by my side the day all my dreams will have come true, the girl I stopped waiting for. Not to long ago I couldn’t imagine facing a day without hearing from her. Now there’s a silence that has falling between us, and I don’t know how to look at her like I once did.

So here I am, Adam S. Crowe…and I have no idea where my life is taking me. But I think it’s time to get back on track, my own track. Starting a journey to a place that’s still left undiscovered, and maybe, just maybe someone will meet me half-way.

How much it hurts - Just off Turner

Where I end and you begin

Douglas Adams once wrote: ‘He felt that his whole life was some kind of dream, and he sometimes wondered whose it was, and whether they were enjoying it.’

I’m parking my car, take of my keys and look in the mirror. I smile, I don’t even care if I look good or not, I feel good, that’s all that matters. Look at her standing there…the familiarity off it strikes me, like distant memories of joyfull dreams.
“Where are we heading for?” she asks. I probably sound like Bilbo Baggins when I answer: “Wherever the road might lead us,” but she laughs anyway…

We end up in my favourite Irish Pub. She’s impressing me by ordering my favourite beer, and she even likes it. A girl enjoying a big pint of Murphy’s Stout…a sparkle in her eyes, the brightest colours in her smile. We’re talking about our youth, about life, about dying,…
I think I’m falling in love.

Half past five turns into half past six turns in to half past seven…turns in to half past ten.

At the trainstation she’s asking me to play my blues harp. I’m nervous for I’ve never played in front of other people, but I want to play for her. My notes sound like crap, but she seems to digg the sound. I feel her finger drawing lines on my back. I gently pull her close to me, I’m breathing her hair, I’m tasting her sweet perfume. She turns her head to mine and softly touches my lips with hers. A fountain of joy’s exploding inside me…I’m trembling, for a second I have no record of where I end and she begins.