Summer Romance
You wake up with a slight sting in your chest, which you realise is the remaining of a horribly vivid nightmare that made you sweat in all the wrong ways last night. In an attempt to forget these uncomfortable memories, which would’ve been better off not experiencing, you shake your head back and forth, and blink for a couple of seconds to get your vision back. This is real life, you are sure, but all uncomfortable feelings that your dream version left behind keep living on in the now, without showing any sign of containing an expiry date. It’s another day to compete against the winds that show off their resistance against you. Another day to get your motivation and mood challenged by grey clouds and a sky that doesn’t stop crying. Perhaps he had another bad dream too, without anyone comforting him or telling him that it will be over soon. How discouraging, when what remains seems to stay here forever, with no change in destination in sight. Or perhaps it was just too dark to see it yet?
To get confirmation on what you already predicted all along, you open the blinds and stop for a second. Staring outside, as you’ve done routinely for so many months, you realise that suddenly, something is different. Where are all the clouds that used to match both your skin colour and your mind? Who will now keep you company when you decide to call it a day, since it’s simply too dark to see all potential opportunities in front of you? Where are the trees moving in the wind, dancing for you as you walk down the roads, which lack in just as much encouragement as when you step foot on them again on the way back? This natural void, which used to represent your own, is suddenly filled with the sound of birds singing to flatter their mates and protect what’s dear to them. All streets are suddenly screaming your name, waiting for your company and for you to ask them to lead the way, and even the grass shows off its colour palette that its new companions brought with them like a house-warming gift.
The wall behind you is now decorated with moving patterns created by all the light shining through the trees outside your window, and has transformed into a shadowlight theatre to entertain you. ‘Is the never-ending nightmare finally over after all?’ You ask yourself, when the sting in your chest magically disappears as it is healed by the sunlight that wraps itself around your whole body to comfort you. Pure euphoria rushes through your body the longer you look around and realise that the simplest of all beauty is finally visible to you, now that you’re cured of your blindness. You’ve finally reached the next destination, one that offers so much more than the previous one which limited itself to melancholy and emotional hibernation. It doesn’t promise that everything will be better, but it provides you with the encouragement to take it in your own hand, and make it your quest to achieve and experience everything that you couldn’t when you were stuck at the last stop. Finally it’s bright enough to see far away and beyond, all the way to the horizon where all stories are written and yet to be lived.
He’s finally here. After months of waiting, disappointment and desires that would never be fulfilled, he’s finally made it into our lives. The happiness he brings compensates for the discomfort of our long wait, so you manage to forgive him for taking his time. All that matters now is what’s in front of you. The past is easy to forget when your mind is occupied with the present. How much has he been teasing you with finally coming around? How many times did you desperately wait for him to enter the door, only to be met with disappointment when after three rings the postman appeared with no good news to deliver. And even now, after all this waiting and the joy he’s brought with being in your life now, you still don’t know how long your relationship is going to last. But perhaps it’s exactly this uncertainty and unpredictability which makes him so desirable? As complicated as it all might seem, at least the joy he brought with him compensates for everything and beyond, so you choose to absorb every little euphoric moment until he’s gone, and you’ll have to wait another year for him to come around again. Because now it’s finally bright enough to see that, too.
Originally published at www.madrebelblog.com on May 9, 2018.
