Seventeen

14 - Ephemerality

The ephemerality of high school is maybe something that I hated, but also craved, and it is now something that I terribly miss.

I remember my first year being one hell of a blur. I fell in love with a girl but didn't realize it until she moved to a different town, I realized that my sexuality was not something that I could just stick in one box and pray for the best. Boys, girls, whoever the fuck, as long as you're someone who's willing to be with me, no matter how deep the wounds are. She is someone who was, but now isn't. She changed.

Things change, and that has been something hard to accept, in my part. One moment, I thought I was going to follow my father's footsteps into Fine Arts, but writing took my breath away to a different world where I was able to create what I could not see, something that I craved, something that I terribly loved to drown in. Words were scattered in my fourteen year old head as my algebra teacher wrote a million expressions on the board that I could not understand. It was blurry, it was something that I thought I could never get away from, but now I can see it clearly. It wasn't meant for me.

Though things change, and confidence may somehow turn into fear, I'll know what I'm doing when the evocative words enter my mind again to haunt me.

Enchanted. It used to be a Taylor Swift song that I would sing in the car with my younger cousin, or a movie about a girl from the fairytale world who got lost in reality. I found myself in a place where magic was somehow found, though it was a place I've been to before, it wasn't like that when I came back... With her.

The guilt of it all, it haunted me. If it was something I did, or something I could've done better, or something I could've avoided; The evocative lyrics of the familiar Sasha Sloan song haunted me as I danced with her ghost, with tears in my eyes, I am still sad. I miss her, and her happy circus that turned into a horror house. I could be with him right now but I know that I can't do that to him, he doesn't deserve the pain that I got from her.

The ephemerality of high school relationships was, something that I craved, but something that I must move on from.

Love isn't going to be described as something magical, or enchanted, because it never is. You don't just fall in love with someone just to fall out of it. You build that love, you work on it, and you never retire from it when you know that it's the right thing to do. Even if you have to leave the one that you love because you need to heal, that's an act of love. That's what working on love means. You work on it, you fix things that need to be fixed, and you don't just give up on it when there isn't a spark anymore, because a spark is just a spark, but your heart can beat for years to come. He is not someone who falls in love with my wounds to try and heal them, but someone who loves me, scars and all.

The longevity of healing is something that I need to do as an act of love, not only for him, but for myself, and it is something that I will move on from.

One day you will be mine, and from then on, 'til death do we part.

– "Ephemerality", November 1