golden

we are golden [a birthday wish]

25 April, 2024 — 1 Comment

[from my vault — versão em português aqui]

Dear A.,

It is your birthday, and I have known you for almost an entire season. The end of Spring brought you to me, and I caught myself falling for you as the days got longer and the weather changed into unbearable heat. I am miserable when it is hot and humid, but I can’t deny that there is something vibrant about Summer, the thing that makes it so attractive to writers of songs, movies and TV shows, when they want to talk about young love.

The two of us, however, are not that young anymore (thank goodness). I say it with a smile and a giggle because we have not lived for long enough to call ourselves old by any measure, but we have lived long enough to have trespassed many of the things that weighed us down when we were innocent. Becoming an adult is playing games with time, figuring out how it is possible that sometimes it flies, and sometimes it drags, always against our wishes, always against how we feel about the things that we are experiencing at a certain point. How do we get over how strange it is to exist, to be anything at all?

Perhaps the problem is that our imagination is completely infected with movie-like scenarios of what the movements of life should look like. Fall, crisis, passion, despair and hunger are always more interesting through cinematographic lenses, where the hearts, aspirations and expectations needn’t be broken, only shattered for a minute, for as long as the scene lasts. Maybe it has something to do with the possibility of skipping parts or turning off the screen. But, as much as I hate sitting with the discomfort of living through things I would rather observe and write about, my sense of wonder keeps me on the verge of transcendence whenever I think too much about the assortment of improbabilities that have come together to weave the fabric of our reality as it is.

Feelings, for all their fleetingness, are something beautiful in how they come to exist. I could write hundreds of journal entries to put my thoughts into place, and figure out what makes me want to talk to you every single day since the day I talked to you for the first time. Since it’s your birthday, I wanted to put into words the rush of joy that I get when I think about you, and the little moments we get to spend together, doing our silly little tasks and jumping through an assortment of random topics, for no other reason besides the fun of sharing ideas with someone who is eager to hear them, and respond.

I am assured that there is beauty and glory in the slightest grain of dust, but I am also convinced that something more valuable is hiding in the parts still unknown, in the unexplored depths, the place where all the things our body, mind and heart cannot understand go. I want to find these treasures with you. It is a cliché to talk about the small but certain happiness, but I cannot help it. And maybe this is the hope that I entertain, when I keep myself sensitive to all of the smallest things that come my way, oscillating between highs and lows just to make sure that I have truly met the limits of myself. It is tiring, but it’s movement that has made us who we are; I am a lot of things, some are better than others, but all of them have come together today to try to tell you that I care immensely about you, and I am glad the assortment of improbabilities that make up reality have come together to bring us together.

Maybe it is crazy luck, maybe it is fate. Maybe Annie Ernaux was right, and it is a form of luxury, to live out a passion for another person. Maybe one day we will realise it was a mishap that we should have foreseen. They say it takes all four seasons to start to get to know someone; this Summer, too, will pass, like all Summers did before, the leaves will turn yellow and begin to fall. But, right now, the Sun is still hot and burning, and our honey skin is glimmering, brighter than ever. You don’t smile often but I like the way you light up when you do. I like the way we glow under the clear day sky, when the monsoon is gone. Maybe being golden together is our treasure.

Please, be happy for a long time. And let’s do it together, for as long as we can.

Happy Birthday to you, from me.

J.

Photo by Lucas K on Unsplash

Sparks

7 July, 2023 — 2 Comments

in honour of Taylor’s Version of “Speak Now” coming out today.

I started a playlist the day we got together for the first time. We had just met the day before. I had known who you were for maybe three weeks, but I had not given myself the space to think or feel anything besides curiosity, and attraction to how pretty your smile was. From afar, you were like a picture-perfect image of something I might as well have imagined while drawing plots of love stories I could be a character in. It seemed so out of my reach, though – until that night when we walked back together after class, and found out we were neighbours. I saw sparks fly all the way home and, as I went upstairs, I called my best friend, and told her that I thought you had seen them, too.

To be honest, at that point, I don’t think I could fathom the thought that you hadn’t felt something as well. My brain was moving faster than the speed of sound, supersonically connecting dots until I could convince myself to fall asleep — which I didn’t, by the way. I navigated that day on a 2-hour nap, trying not to pay attention to you in the classroom, unaware that I was on my way to another sleepless night. We talked until dawn like it was the easiest thing in the world. You told me we should dive into one another, I told you “let’s fall slowly.” I was holding you close, with your head on my chest, and I loved how it felt. I didn’t want to rush it, and ruin it. I wanted the slow burn, I wanted to take my time, I swear to God I did, but I gave into hurry too easily, and it was all Taylor Swift’s fault, when I listened to “Snow on the Beach”, a few hours after we parted ways. It came out last year just a few days before I got my heart broken for the first time in years. I was so upset by all the frustrated expectations I allowed myself to nurture, and the song became a symbol of all the things it seemed that I couldn’t have at the time – someone that I wanted, wanting me just the same. But it happened to you, somehow. It had felt so impossible, and, on my way back home, later that day, I think I could barely believe it was really happening. So I made that playlist. 

And it would have been an okay thing for starters, but I kept adding other songs to it, I kept having ideas about what you could mean to me. That’s when it got out of control. Those songs became projections of who I wanted you to be – but I barely knew who you were! I don’t want to ask you yet, but I wonder if you could tell, during those first few weeks, that I was not taking it slow, like I had said we should, like I had asked you to do. I was much more eagerly looking forward to my imaginary plot, but these first few weeks were not like the perfect beginning I had envisioned, and you didn’t play along the lines of my story, and I panicked when I couldn’t read you as easily as I thought I would. I kept listening to those songs, and thinking of made-up memories of times I expected we would come to live together, and I got increasingly frustrated with how slowly time was moving. And you weren’t every single definition of the person I had imagined you would be — and I was convinced you had to be like that, because the person in my imagination would never break my heart, and I couldn’t stand the thought of getting hurt again. 

I’m glad I took the wise advice of the people around me, aware of my anxious habits, who care to let me know when I’m about to let the voices in my head break apart something that could be good, just because I have no chill. I was so infatuated, and so, so scared, with a tempestuous mind that pours down like a cloudburst. But you made your way, through the lightning and thunder, and you met me there. Doing your best, and being so kind to me, with your peaceful, steady voice, you helped me weather through the storm in my head. And, as the sense of urgency stopped pounding, and I could breathe properly, I could finally appreciate how the appropriate measure of the time we had spent together could be enough for the day. 

Today, when you texted me in the morning, I felt a shift that I hadn’t known in a long time – when an infatuation turns into a little seed of a feeling. It felt good. Without the magnifying glass of anxiety, I can feel everything more clearly, including the pleasure of realising a picture of you, but also how I honestly still feel so scared. I have no idea how you feel, even though I can tell that you like me, and that you respect me, and that you think about me when we’re not together (which is a silly thought, but one that means a lot to me). Honestly, I don’t want to say it out loud yet, but I do think I could love you, but I know there’s a lot of waves I must sail through first – because, if this seed grows into love, I want to love you and who you are, and I don’t think I’ve seen enough of you to get there. I’m scared but I want you to see me, too, and I want you to feel like you could love me, too. I overthink too much, but I’m aware of the mess, and I hope you can see through the cloudy skies when I’m gloomy and struggling to find the right words. Gosh, I still feel so silly around you, so worried about impressing you, wondering what you think of everything. I am still learning to read you, and trust you.

That playlist I started on day 1 looks much smaller now, which is only fitting for what this little time represents. It’s short, but it’s meaningful, because it doesn’t stem from my ideas of who you should be, but from the things I got to see, hear and touch with my own eyes, ears, hands and lips. The thoughts in my head spiral out of control with ease, but the feelings all through my body will keep my cool for the whole of us (I mean, all the different parts of me). But I feel safe, like I can finally take a small step back, and let it be. There are no guarantees, there is no assurance that things will end well, and that none of us will leave with a broken heart, but I feel less and less concerned about how it will end, and more and more appreciative of today, the time we get to spend together, the memories I get to keep – the way you laugh when we’re talking about something stupid, or the way you look when you open the door for me to walk in, and the fact that you care that I like it when you hug me, even though I don’t like hugs. I think I’m falling for you, so things are, indeed, going according to plan.

Photo by Michael Behrens on Unsplash