Alex's Nirvana

Alex

I’m driving in my car and I have lost my way. I was on my way to pick up tulips for nirvana but then I saw something that reminded me of her and I’m just following the straight road, not knowing what it leads to or if I will find any piece of mind at the end of this drive. I search for the first thing that reminds me of nirvana, but nothing does. It’s just a vast, vacant road, one that I can’t see ending anytime soon.
I stop driving and park on the side of the road next to an old oak tree that shelters me with its shade. This is the exact road nirvana and I took when we went on our little road trip to NYU. I can still see her sitting right next to me, the sunshine shining directly on her face, lighting her features up and intensifying them the way no makeup ever could. I can clearly imagine her, her knees pulled up against her chest, her hair falling down her shoulders and nearly reaching her hips.
The first few hours of our drive was filled with animated conversations, tedious road trip games, and a lot of junk food and spilled drinks. I stare down at my floor and see the stain nirvana’s blueberry smoothie left behind and I smile.
It was your basic road trip between two teenagers without their parents, driving down from Canada to New York to spend a single day on campus. When nirvana asked me to drive her there because her parents couldn’t, I agreed to do it almost instantaneously and started preparing weeks before hand.
We were behind schedule so we didn’t stop to look for a hotel; we only kept on driving until I could no longer keep my eyes open and was falling asleep behind the steering wheel. We both pulled our seats back to its maximum, I opened the cars roof, and we just lay down as close as we could to each other without anything being too uncomfortable for the both of us.
Nirvana laid her head against my shoulder and stared up at the stars through the exposed ceiling of my car. She kept on pointing out constellations and naming them, but the constellations in the sky don’t compare to the ones I used to see in her sparkling eyes. In fact, the whole entire damn sky didn’t compare to her, they barely stood a chance, and her eyes harbor far more secrets, mysteries, and fascinations than our entire galaxy.
She asked me why I wasn’t looking at the sky with her, I didn’t want to say something stupid like “how can I look at the stars in the sky when I have the ones in your eyes?” or “I have my own personal supernova burning brightly right next to me” but I just kept my mouth shut and simply said I was tired.
That night was so calming and serene, it made me want to hold onto her and never let go but it’s like we both knew that the dissolution of our relationship, or whatever it was that we had, was coming closer and closer every single day.
“You know it’s time to let go when your love brings more pain than pleasure.” Nirvana whispered those deadly words in my ears, I thought she was awake but she wasn’t, she was sleeping deeply, she was only saying what was on her mind.
She curled up against me and held onto me, no more words were needed; this was all the calm before the storm, or to be more accurate, the intermission between two storms that tore us apart further and further each time.
I could feel the real me fade off into the darkness as my alter ego took control of me once more and I doubted a therapist could snap me out of it, or prescribed pills could help me control it, nothing really made a difference, well nothing except for nirvana but she also makes things worse, she enhances it all and calls out to my demons just by being herself. Nirvana is something so pure and so innocent and delicate that all my alter ego would ever want to do is hurt her, break her, and stain her. she has a backbone and a dark side too, but she rarely ever gives into it, she only tames it and curbs it, it never gets out of control, it stays within her the way it’s supposed to, unlike me. I wonder what would happen if our demons met each other face to face, would they intertwine together and dance together, or would they fight against each other and tear us even further apart?
I am back in my car, underneath the sun, staring down at the stain she left behind in my car, I mean I could’ve removed it by now, but I didn’t want to.
I slowly start to feel more and more suffocated by the second so I open my door and walk out of my car, leaving the keys in the ignition. I walk around a bit until I start running. I run and I run on and on until I can’t feel my lungs, until my legs feel like they might snap and collapse. I run until I start seeing glowing images flashing in front of me. How far am I from my car now? I don’t even know, nor do I care.
I fall down on the grass right next to the road and just stare up at the sun, around nirvana I always felt like Icarus flying too close to the sun, now I feel so far away from it. Its freezing right now and I think it’s about to rain again but I don’t move, I just stay there and breathe. Just breathe.
I get up after a while, once my heart beat slowed down and my breathing attained a stable inhalation and exhalation pattern, I stood up and my jaw nearly dropped. I see them, out of nowhere; I see an entire field of tulips surrounding me.