I like to travel, read, write, dance and pretend. At the moment I am suffering an insufferable phase of self-aggrandizement, premature maturity and lack of wit.
If you think you can help me out of this funk, write me at idaman.z@gmail.com
When I met you, I was young and glorious. I reveled in sweat, I glistened under the sun. My footsteps echoed confidence, I was as predictable as the stock market is predictable. I thirsted for the world. I believed I could have everything and worried that I would not.
When I met you, you were young and beautiful. You were innocent, but you were tired of innocence. You were calm and relaxed. Your joys were small joys, your sorrows were fleeting. Your heart was your virtue. You loved life for its simplicity, while I, back then, chose to seek the most complicated of paths.
Combined, we were everything we were not, and isn't that such a clichéd setup? If one cliché is laughable, two is trite, but a hundred? A hundred clichés will move us. We had to fall in love; it is only the way the world works.
I found you different because you were beautiful, and you thought me beautiful because I was different. You worshiped me for my contentious nature, and I idolized your inherent kindness. But see, the seed that was our beginning also yielded our end. In time we grew aware of and resented our mutual idolatry, and the pedestal we built for each other began to crumble. You felt as if you constrained me, that somehow being with you tethered that passionate wildness you found so beguiling. And me, I grew uncomfortable and then ashamed at how wicked I seemed compared to you.
How long did we stay in each other’s orbits? I don’t remember, or at least, I don’t want to remember. But like all things, we had to end. The pull grew too strong and we collided, like bits of rock in the vacuum of the universe. There was a lot of energy in that elastic collision; we broke apart and were flung into the vast space on our own – lonely little rocks, heavy with the salt of tears.
How does one begin to describe the desolation of loneliness? All have limped through its barren wastelands, but none has yet managed to pick the right words out of the millions that exist to paint the exquisite colors of this affliction. Eggplant is the word I would choose, and we both know it is a paltry description of the bruises we inflicted on ourselves.
Being with you left a stain on me, and for a while I tried to wash it out of the fabric of my being. Over time I accepted that you had branded me, and when I met you again, I realized that I, too, had left my mark on you.
Apart, we grew up. I ate crocodiles and rode elephants. I danced into the hearts and pants of women and men. The world that I wanted as a young girl beckoned and I staked a claim on it, like a land-lusty conqueror. I thought of you and forgot about you, and I am sure you did the same.
As we bloomed (or is it wilted?) into our new selves we grew apart. I am still glorious, but my brilliance is tempered somewhat by the knowledge of my faults. I sweat less ; I prefer the shelter of shade. I saunter now, like a rancher in the Old West, shoulders a little stooped by what some think is lazy pride, but I know it is humility that makes me slouch. I have routines these days, although I am still reckless. I don’t want the world anymore; I have all that I need.
And you, your shadow is still the same but your soul has grown. Your new confidence makes me want to look over my shoulder, to check if it is me you are talking to. Your voice has lost that playful riff; it is deeper and sterner than I remember. And now it is you who demands the world.
When I met you again, you reminded me of me. I am less of a boy now, more woman. You have evolved even further; there is no trace of the girlishness in you I found so startlingly distracting, covetable and ultimately destructive - you are pure man.
When we touched, after infinite years of not touching, our younger selves emerged like moles out of their dark little burrows, almost blind with confusion and relief, for we have found each other again. In the room there were four of us; them - the young girl that wanted to be the world and the young boy that wanted to fill her world - and us - older, wiser, less ambitious derivatives of them. I imagine the elegant anguish and simple delight that I felt, that I am sure you felt when you were inside of me, they are testament of our adulthood.
We are still solitary little rocks sailing through space, but our orbits are closer now. Who knows, maybe one day we’ll circle the same moon and crash together like twin meteorites, bright and icy hot, a heart-shaped crater cradling what is left of us.
