The Summer sun always brings out the best in everyone, the smile and laughter, and the mid-afternoon BBQs. This Summer so far has filled me full of nostalgia with a pint of lager in my garden, looking back over a year to the date today on how things have changed and how things could and would have been very different to how they are now. Sitting back in my chair, I realise that this moment would have easily been spent differently if I plucked up the courage and took the plunge, jumped into something that at the time I felt scared about, and it was later I saw what it was I missed out on when it was too late.
My laugher and joy a year ago today was me being wrapped up and cuddled into someone I loved like never before, calling it infatuation would do it injustice to how I felt, because I felt as if I was always home there with her. I've always given the advice of ‘always keep arm’s length’ to my friends and family so they don’t fall into a trap and end up being hurt, and I've always lived by that saying even though at times I should take upon my own advice, but that saying was dropped with only a click of the fingers. It wasn’t something that lasted a great deal of time, if anything we only made things more exclusive as time went on, but it was time spent as if we were in a fairy tale.
She was beauty and I was the lucky beast which had a background that the most unsavoury man would boast about, and each morning I woke up knowing that it was her face, her smile, and her personality that made everything worthwhile. For such a small amount of time for things to happen and words to be said, I didn’t feel like I was being pushed into anything in the slightest, and if anything it was me that was silently pushing for more to happen. Nothing moved in slow motion with us, but the acceleration of it all became the biggest demise for me and watching it fall around me sent my head into a whirlwind and before I could work out a plausible solution, it grew worse and she grew further away from me.
The photographs of us that were full of life and colour slowly turned into black and white, the pearly white grins evolved into a grinding pain in the pits of my stomach, and I saw that turning point I feared would happen from the start dawn on me. Karma does have its weird way of walloping me with its fist, and to be fair from my past I deserved watching her get torn away leaving me with a gaping hole inside of me, it was that reality that I should have prepared myself for from the beginning but I didn’t. It came at me like a death in my life, the memories burned and charred in the flame that my anger fuelled and ignited, and it roared through the memories of her like a wildfire in a forest leaving next to nothing in its aftermath.
After it was all said and done, the feelings inside me for her still circulated through my veins just the like blood that pumps around my body, and an emptiness spread when it came to that time of year where you curl up in front of the raging log fire with your loved ones. I wanted to leave a present with her so I searched high and low for something in particular I knew she wanted, and I travelled a distance to pick it up and drop it off on her doorstep as a surprise for her, and I just sat back in the darkness of the wings watching her open the door after I rang the doorbell. Her face was puzzled until she pulled apart the bow and revealed the gift to her naked eyes, and her face swiftly filled with joy looking around to see where I was after reading the small gift card, but I was almost undetectable to her with my black coat and dark denim jeans even though I was a stone throw away from her; I just wanted to see that smile for the last time and give her something to remember me by even when I seem so distant to her.
I couldn’t and still can't fathom how I ended up the way I was after the break up, how I sat for weeks on end attempting to sew myself back together with the thread that kept breaking every time I heard her name, or walked passed somewhere that reminded me of a time with her. I worked my way through the emails back and forth I had from her that I had to erase, but I found myself reading them again and reliving those tiny pocket moments of specific times together, times where I was always complimented on a smile and the look of glee in my eyes by others around me. Then there’s now where I let the sun in the midday hour beat down on me tanning my traditional pasty white English skin, letting the beer sooth me into a relaxing state where I could easily fall asleep, and wake up feeling revived and refreshed.
It feels strange that when I look at her and remind myself of her and the times we had, she’s so distant now, and it’s as if we’re complete strangers to each other. At one point over that short time we knew everything about each other including our colourful pasts and our misdemeanours, and all it took was the same elapsed time for us to fall in love for things to turn sour and become non-existent to each other, just a fairy tale story to play in both our hearts and minds back in the Summer of that year. She was the shortest but sweetest and purest love I've had and felt for a long time, and it saddens me that it lasted a short amount of time and that it has come to this, having her become to me just another ‘what’s her name?’ over a broken heart that just tried to mend itself.
