Beyond the Shadows

Someone once said that the moment you stop to think about whether you love someone, you’ve already stopped loving that person forever.

The feeling of uninhibited love for another, be it family, friend, or significant other, is not thought about, conjured up, or found upon the pedals of a flower. It is not produced by a factory or simulated on the big screen.

It simply exists. It flows from within.

This is the easy part. Excitement, wonder, awe, desire, intrigue, curiosity, love. You feel content when they're around, but notice when they're not. Although the feeling may course through your very being, expression of that feeling so it is understood is a much harder task.

Especially if you remember that after every flow comes its ebb.

Welcome back to earth. It's at this point of declination that a relationship is truly defined. This is the hard part. Fear, doubt, worry, regret, disregard, indifference. It requires one to come out of the shadows of normality, of regularity, and do more than they have done before.

But remember, every ebb has its flow.

...

Someone also once said, ‘The female heart is a labyrinth of subtleties, too challenging for the uncouth mind of the male racketeer.’

But, before I could process that statement, I was hopelessly dumbstruck. I was at the mercy of this creature whose words and charms I had neither means nor desire to resist. I wished that she would never stop speaking, that her voice would wrap itself around me forever, and that nothing would break the spell of that moment that belonged only to me.

Perhaps for that very reason, I adored her all the more, because of the eternal human stupidity of pursuing those who hurt us the most.

I looked at her for a few moments without saying anything. I thought about how much I wanted to lose myself in those evasive eyes. I thought about the loneliness that would take hold of me that night when I said goodbye to her, once I had run out of tricks or stories to make her stay with me any longer. I thought about how little I had to offer her and how much I wanted from her.

We embraced, and I hoped that she might feel, if just for a second, the way I felt about her at that moment.

I watched her slip inside and close the door behind her, and I turned to face the chilly, dark night… alone.

Mr. Potato Block

So what do you write about when you can’t write? When you’ve been looking at a computer screen for the past 9 hours with nothing to show for it? When everything you thought to be worth writing is now rendered worthless as it is read by no one?

I’m not sure.

I have this problem every once in a while. Some people call it writers block. I’m not really sure why it’s called that. There isn’t an actual block that they pass around like hot potato to see who gets stuck with it… “Oh, Sorry Ralph (Waldo Emerson), you can’t write for about a week. It looks like the entire literary world will have to suffer through seven more days of unenlightened prose until your block is taken by someone else.’ Watch out F. Scott... you're next.

Now, I’m not claiming Ralph Waldo status… doing so might get me thrown out of many writers ‘Circles’ (If you get that joke, I tip my hat to you.)… But for some reason, the usual fluidity, the non ceasing thought process that continually flows more and more and more… so much that you’re actually laughing to yourself at the pure genius of it all, as you can hardly type fast enough to get it all down… that sweet enjoyment of putting thought after thought on paper and connecting them one at a time by daring and outlandish means… yeah… that thing… is gone.

Why? Because I’ve been thinking about what really matters to people. To me. To you. To someone reading these words right… about… NOW. …

I think I’ve learned that I can’t write about anything of importance. I’ve tried. Hard. And because most of the things that have been going on lately are important to me… I am unable to find non essential things to write about.

As much as I’d like to be able to write about what really matters, to really open up and show what’s inside… I can’t. Not even if I’m the only one to ever read what’s written.

But the ironic thing is, as I look back at the other things I’ve written, I can find a small piece of me inside the words… a vulnerable, unaltered, tell-all piece of me. And maybe I wasn’t trying to hide it, or maybe I was… either way it’s there, and I found it. Can you?

The Title is Longer Than the Post

Shortest. Blogpost. Ever.