to be heartbroken assumes you gave your heart to someone and they didn’t care for it the way you wanted them too. but you were brave enough to give it - which is half the battle, I think.
I wasn’t happier being heartbroken, and I wasn’t happy always wondering what they were thinking, what I was thinking, how they felt, how I felt, being nervous and then being euphoric, then feeling like you thought there was another step on the stairway and lunging that extra few inches downward. I think I wasn’t happy, but I was much more tangled up in it. there were so many conversations and unsaid things and they were unpredictable and I felt so much more alive, time was so heightened, so tangible and now - I wish to do it again?
differently, it can’t be the same twice. before I was sure I didn’t want my heart going anywhere near it, and for the most part, I succeeded. it wasn’t a romance or an adventure, it was more missed steps than anything. now I was to give my heart, but I don’t know how and I don’t think they know I want them to have it.
do I always think I’ve never felt this way before? that I’ve never wanted to be with someone this way, and I think I’m right, this is very new for me. it makes me feel proud but it makes me feel shy, which isn’t something I’m accustomed to. how do you tell someone you think about them all the time, or that you want to know them and listen to their music and drink and just sort of stare at each other. that’s so terrifying, and really, does anyone actually want that? does this person? I don’t know what I’m doing, and I’m afraid that by waiting and trying to find a way to do something, that I’ll be looked right over.
here is the truth. I start with sex, because everyone wants sex, and I’m really good at sex. I like sex, so it’s not something that I think takes away from me. but I sometimes think I start that way because I believe no one will want me without it. no one will notice me that way or think about me the way I think about them - I don’t have that faith in myself. I still don’t think I do. I want to be proven wrong, I want a hopeless romance, a connection with someone that is terrifying and liberating and I want to share things I never thought I could loosen my grip on long enough to let anyone else know. I want foolish, passionate, silly love. love that makes two people obsessed with each other, makes them want them every day and makes them crazy.
it is supposed to happen on its own, but this won’t, it won’t because I always avoid them and their too shy to do anything first and how do these things happen really?
I wake up and he is in my kitchen with our friend and my mother, unloading groceries. The part of my brain that’s organizing and directing this makes me remember that, of course, he and Simon are going to Pittsburg and stopped to stay the night on the way. But then that part gets muddled, I remember them coming and arriving but now I remember packing for Shakespeare and looking at dresses and blouses and waiting for Andy, but then I’m back in the kitchen. My mother leaves to go do something else, I have no idea, and I begin to help unloading as well - Simon and him don’t have any idea where anything goes. I’m putting away bread when he comes up behind me and puts a hand on my shoulder and I turn around and his presence is a little much, but he’s not tall at all so I handle it. “I told your mom about us.” I’m so horrified for a second I just let my jaw drop and look at Simon, who is pretending not to listen and I look back at Joe and he looks confused and surprised at my reaction. I go, “What? What? What the hell were you -” and he cuts me off and waves his hands around in front of him, like my words are going to attack him. Which they were. “No, no, I mean, that we’re not together anymore.”
Anymore is the horrible word, because it made me feel like we were together at some point and that’s a lie, we weren’t. I say, “Oh, that makes sense,” and then I go back to putting bread away and then I walk upstairs and continue packing and I start crying because I think that tomorrow I will be at Shakespeare & Co. but I realize he will be there too but it won’t be the same and now he’s invaded my place, my home, and he’s bringing her along and they’re going to be ‘actors’ and I have no idea what I want and what I’m going to be and what I’m doing.
I spend some time trying on a black dress, something simple, and then take it off and put on a white shirt and jeans, though I can’t find my boots. Andy comes back up, I don’t know where she was, but she looks at me and doesn’t say anything and helps me pack and won’t let me start falling apart again, which I hate and love about her. I remember being in my bed with him, in my room, not worried about others being home because we have the whole house to ourselves. I remember everything and it makes me lonely and hurt and angry and miss him miss him miss him all the time every day in my thoughts.
it has been two weeks. I started something like this once before - “it has been two weeks.”
not the same two weeks. now I miss him and thinking about him makes me look up and tighten my lips together and push my fingernails into my palm and try not to sigh, but I sigh anyway and then I look right down at the ground, the only safe place.
I’m just missing him and us and the summer, such a beautiful, beautiful magic summer.
Her beauty is not just—or even primarily—physical. In her face, I see her wisdom, her compassion, her courage, her eternal glory. This other beauty, this spiritual beauty—which is the deepest truth of her—sustains me in times of fear and despair, as other truths might sustain a priest enduring martyrdom at the hands of a tyrant. I see nothing blasphemous in equating her grace with the mercy of God, for the one is a reflection of the other. The selfless love that we give to others to the point of being willing to sacrifice our lives for them, is all the proof I need that human beings are not mere animals of self-interest; we carry within us a divine spark, and if we chose to recognize it, our lives have dignity, meaning, hope. In her it is a spark that is bright, a light that heals rather than wounds me.
— Dean Koontz, Seize the Night
