Sunflowers

4: Stranded

The sands in the hourglass crossed over to the other side, again and again and again and again. I had never known time to pass this fast, while still being ever so slow. She might as well have left yesterday but that yesterday was months ago. Months that had turned her into a mere illusion of memories and yet within my bubble, she was very real. There were times I didn't even remember who she was, a mere speck in the infinite human experiences but other times, she was the only one. The only one who really mattered.

A passage of time is like a tunnel, you know there is an exit, the other side, but you can never know what it is. Everything else is a blur of mundane everyday tasks completed with minimal to no effort and chance encounters with strangers you do not care to remember, the emptiness that you bury with work because you have no idea what to do with it, all the while being focused on the other side because it is sure to be better than whatever life we are currently living in.

Who knew where she was right now... Was she on a faraway coast of a beach on some uncharted island? Or was she like me; sipping wine at 3 am in her living room because sleep is a phantasm created by the tired mind that a broken heart clearly sees through. More hours in the day. More time to wallow in one's own sorrow.

Social Media has made us lazy and given us a tool to continue being afraid. Texting is easier than talking, the illusion that there is nothing to be afraid of, nothing to worry about. Words that are but an excuse for a conversation. Impersonal and casual; perfect. Nothing to give you away. It is nothing but a doorway to an abyss of jealousy and overthinking without any sort of actual communication.

This is what I had been reduced to. Spending all my free time on social media. A game of guessing. Love is not a game. Did I even know her enough to love her? Who were all these people? I was none of them. I knew so many of them but evidently, I did not know Ariel.  Ariel, the only one who really mattered.

A stray comment. A compliment. Reminiscing on the fraction of time we spent together. A dry update about her book. A few laughs; no, not laughs, abbreviations and emoticons. Is this all we were? Everything we had, abated to... this. An impersonal conversation; no, an impersonal reaction reel. Her reacting to my stuff and me reacting to her stuff.

I wish I could have at least seen her at brunch.

NO.

It was better this way. Forgetting was easier. Not her, never her. Just the fact that we ever had anything to begin with. Social media is poison. It gave me hope and at the same time, it cast the spell of doubt. Hope and doubt mixed together can drive a person to insanity. I did not want that to happen, so I killed the hope. And the doubt wreaked havoc in my heart causing nothing but pain. Forgetting was easier.

Right now, I am reminded of Khalil Gibran's words: Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.

I wish I could remove all traces of her from my memories. I wanted to forget her voice, her smile, her face and the tequila. Everything that reminded me of her was gone. And yet, as much as you want the body to forget, your conscious mind to forget, the subconscious never does. No matter how hard you try.

I surrounded myself with sunflowers. I had endless excuses as to why I owned something sunflower themed but in the end, it all boiled down to the simple fact that it all reminded me of her.

"What's up with you and Ariel?"

"Excuse me?"

Hazel gave her usual 'You know what I mean' look and I blushed. I had told nobody because I knew for a fact that I would be ridiculed. The fact that Hazel knew caught me off guard and completely unprepared to answer. I stuttered out a feeble nothing which was clearly not convincing enough.