Walking Away

Nostalgic.  5.15pm, November 29 2005.  Snowflakes fall gracefully as tears well up in my eyes.  I look at the snow, so serene, simple, pure and innocent, and I wish this could be a reflection of me. Stumbling in silence, we enter the foyer of the Spokane County Courthouse.  It is not my dad meeting me at the altar.  The altar does not even exist. It’s a Judge, dressed in morbid black, smiling with his pearly white teeth; ironic.

This is not how I pictured any of it; there are no gardenias, no strapless wedding gown, and no smiling faces in the crowd, or my best friend as maid of honour, no feast filled reception, no sunshine…no family.  What am I doing? I’m holding the hand of the man I have obsessed over since the sinless age of sixteen, and now five years later we are together.

My parents are 7810 miles away thinking I’m visiting relatives around the continental US.  I am betraying them.  This is going to hurt them.  How does a Samoan girl leave behind cultural tradition?  How does the eldest grandchild abandon family responsibility?  Love does not hurt, it burns.  My heart is scorched with an understanding of the ultimate betrayal.  Standing here in a cold and dark foyer I take it all in.  Here I stand with a man who is close to a stranger, an overly pleasant Judge, the scrawny court security guard who so kindly agreed to be our witness and I hear the song “I Miss You” by Blink 182, mirroring my thoughts in the echo of the silent room.  I close my eyes and let it all go.  Nothing else matters in this moment.

I embrace the emotional rollercoaster and this is how I feel.  So many questions unanswered.  Love.  What is it?  Where does it come from?  Who has it and who deserves it?  There is no genuine or precise definition of this fragile sense of being.  You know that feeling where you crave and crave until it becomes an obsession?  Where you know how that person talks? How they walk? How they smell?  And how they breathe?

The first thing in the morning when you wake and the last thing before you sleep at night, in your dreams and all the time between.  That is how much they dwell within you.  These are the times when you long to be with them, where you cannot think until you see them, until you feel their embrace, cold or warm.  It is an unconditional relationship entrapping deceit, hate and desire, maybe even real love, yet it is so much more, where two people are known to one another, where one is what you become, for a week or eternity.

You have to accept what is given to you, change will not occur.  Hope all you want, your hope will still be in vain.  Love is where the eloquence of honesty is what you live for.  Where hurting from the truth is better than living a lie.  What matters most to you?  Faithfulness from the heart and from the eyes.  Hurt comes, he may leave, and he might stay… maybe.  For what though?  This hurtful existence leaves you aching, longing, wanting more, leaves you naive, vulnerable and torn.  You may not get over it but the reality is you will have to move on, a cliché but true.  But anything is possible.  Being lonely is better than living unhappy.

Many years have passed.  I have moved on from the sadness.  I remember that cold November night, Blink 182 and a shiver of melancholic conscience washes over me.  Sometimes I wish time would stand still; allow the numbness to flow through, and embrace me completely. I am thankful so I let it all go, grateful for this burning feeling, this path of true and undying substance.  Now, it feels good to be free.

Curly Miri © 2012

Love & laughter,
Curly Miri