for you, my invisible string

I am sorry for the silence. I needed some time to process the world around me. A lot had happened, and I needed a second to breathe. I am still learning how to, but for the longest time, I have been consumed with the thought of connection and belongingness.

Life is all about stumbling and finding people to fall back on. It is an overtly simple, ridiculously complicated journey, but I believe that, eventually, your heart finds its coziest corners in the cup of someone’s hands. It is surprising when it does, and you are left feeling disarmed. It is a human flaw to expect and even adapt to the worst. The main question is: what do you do when, as the days and the months go by, you know that-

That it was-

One second. Yes, okay. I can do this.

That it was different with them. Your present is vacant without them, and you know that theirs is too. You know that there are things to iron out, priorities to be placed, and an almost battered trust, but it is not “goodbye, good riddance” with them like it is with the other people you once loved beyond your usual tablespoon capacity. No. Not at all. It is not even an abstract form of ‘yearning’ where you know, rationally, that the future will never collude with the dream in your mind.

It is a certain yearning. It is knowing that the tide is turning. It is knowing that-

That things are…different with them.

Different and more like yourself, even beyond yourself. Things take a happy turn with a series of crooked jokes. Things take a happier turn because you know that when the sun sleeps, you wish the best for each other. You know that your mistakes exist, but theirs might be (are) sharper, but you cannot help feeling connected to them. You cannot help knowing that your affection for them mirrors what you feel for, say, a packet of bindis and a clean stroke of kajal in your eyes, rows of shimmering lights over the street, and a microwaved chocolate truffle pastry, or even a bar of dark chocolate in the fridge.

There are not many words that can circle your feelings, and you know that you have no other option but to wait for the universe to do its thing. At the same time, you can physically feel the weight of your…whatever. It is not painful at all. It just fills you whole like eating too much at dinner, but not so much that it hurts your stomach. Maybe the key to solving this (whatever this is) is by turning your feelings into bite-sized biscuits. So, you try to cut through them by going back and forth through your text chain with him. You try to find the signs you earlier missed, you try to discard your gut feeling as delusion. (Pro tip: that never works.) You do everything in your power. You open their photos and point out faults. You inspect their personality with a magnifying glass and make the dreaded pros and cons list. You did not need to. You know why you took several steps back.

You also know that he will walk the distance between you two. Damn it. Where is this coming from? Has it finally happened? After months of proving your immunity, you have finally fallen prey to the illusion of the ‘6 feet tall’? You march back to March in your mind, remember your week-long crush on some other guy, and sigh.

That was a distraction. He was never meant to replace them (him) in your mind. Oh.

You feel what you feel. You can’t help it. Popular opinion tells you to never go against your gut because she knows what she is doing. (I read it on Instagram). You open your laptop and write about him, hoping that the universe has no other tricks up its sleeve. You are literally in your room, writing about him on your newsletter because it is better and smarter to write about him here. You sigh again.

The universe can do its thing. You have had a long day today, anyway. Your throat is parched, and you cuss at this little thing called a weather pattern temper. You open your notes app and think of you and him in the shade of flaming amber— a shade beyond lilac and turquoise.

You can feel it in your heart and in your gut and in your chest, in the spaces between your fingers and the turn of your mind from its back to its side. You can feel it. You know it despite your present.

You stretch your legs and yawn. You tell yourself that clarity is key and that it does not matter. Does it not, though? Perhaps. Who knows?

You know one thing. Life is too short to not spend it with someone who turns you into a fuzzy rubber ball and whom you can hurl the choicest of insults at.

i was watching s3 of the summer i turned pretty, which prompted me to write this. conrad has all my heart actually.