This blog is part of a series of blogs of written archives from the year with a range of topics. Grammar is out the door. This is a free-association hellscape. Whoops!
Title: I’ll never forget the 31st of December 23:59- 51°6'0"N, 17°1'59.99"E
Manifested my femininity in the purest and safest feeling of submission. I like to stand strong, usually by myself when possible. You pointed out my strange mix of loving being by myself and my hopeless romantic nature. The way I carry myself, as you suggested, I prod on with that untouchable aura of my being, with my heart on my sleeve. You’ve pointed this out, but your words and touch seem to be slipping from memory lately, which is why I wanted to write to you; this open letter, about who exactly you were to me that night on the 31st of December.
With you, I felt most like a woman, a woman of her finest divine and regal presence. The ultimate sanctifying feeling of true and essential femininity. When I think of what it is I most look for in another, I can never really strum up the right words. It felt like a lifetime in a flash of a moment. Spending nights with you dancing till the sun came up, strolling aimlessly along our city’s most beautiful bridges with morning 9-5ers gawking at the euphoric, cloud-9 look on our faces. That secret language of just eye contact in a busy bustling environment, our world that exists right there, unseen by all others. Man, you are such a good dancer.
It’s never how it is in Hollywood, this is something you always hated. The romance in movies sent furious, pointy chills down your spine; a love placebo. Mine too. Our connection resembled a Linklater masterpiece, except our playground was our hometown in which you presented to me with fresh and vibrant eyes. I longed for something like this. Introducing me to my roots and self with a comforting sense of familiarity mixed with a prodding excitement for you. I’ve told you my continuous feeling of feeling like a cultural gypsy; Never really feeling like I belong to any of the two cultures dominating my identity. This weighs on me, heavily, still to this day. It’s been a year and a half now and I still can’t seem to wrap my head around what it was that you did to make me feel love like I never have before. The mix of submission, deliberate and true understanding of intimacy, tied to my cultural roots, that feeling that makes my throat swell up like I have nothing to swallow but the dry air on a winter’s night although still, I'm smiling with my happy, green, wet eyes.
You never took me as a cautious lover. Playfully teased me about my various fledgling love interests and innocent indiscretions with the passive lovers of mine, and yours as well. You coined my nickname as a reckless romantyk. Yet, I know you felt burdened by me. And I understand now, this wasn’t meant to hurt me like it did that night, but you felt the need to stay away to not break me as you convinced you’ve broken yourself.
Pushing people away is something I’ve done for a while after that night. Falling back on the support of people horrible for my health, and never taking a leap of faith. The silence of my weeps as I write this shows to me that love breeds a sort of innate fear of pain which often accompanies self-sabotage in the future, only for it to be reflected back at you on a dimly lit computer screen (maybe just in my case). We conjure up tactics to not hurt others or yourself. But I feel like I’m lying to myself.
I’ve never been a cautious lover in your eyes, this is what you recognized in me as beautiful. The fighter in me who always sought out the best in you despite the flaws instead of fleeing to another, going in fully and freely like an artist and a crisp, blank canvas. This is the rigidity of today though. Nobody wants to fight for it. And I can’t say with certainty that I may have become that person myself earlier this year. Not due to lack of choice, but simply because the cautiousness has crept up lately.
It seems foolish to me that I had to scramble up these random strings of thoughts about you. It’s currently 2 AM, and I’ve had too much time to think, yet again. But I couldn’t help but think lately, that maybe if I hadn’t left that night, I wouldn’t make you feel like you’re in this limbo game with me, and maybe I wouldn’t have broken one of the most God-like presence I’ve grown so close to. You tell me I should take some time to be alone, that I am too naive to brave the nature of relationships, that you’d hate to see me broken by anything or anyone. Of course, in that charming and sly way, you always add that it's either alone time for me or being with you. This always makes us laugh because either way, we’ll be alone together anyway. But I’m here to say I haven’t been broken, and my judgment has never been more iron-cast. I feel like it always has been though.
"Julcia, a woman made of gold, strong head on her shoulders, with legs to the sky like rockets."
The 3am phone calls, the saved cigarette packages, the 4 am post-dancing kebab wrappers tucked in my small wallet, the sleepless nights, and the fantasies we seem to run to tirelessly. I miss you, but not in a way that hurts, which is the most beautiful and most palpable feeling of love that brings me so much joy and enthusiasm in life.
I may not have you, and I may not want to anymore, but you’ve changed the way I look at what it means to cherish the mix of innocence and independence in my identity as a friend and a lover. And if that night was goodbye, like milk and honey, it left the sweetest taste on my tongue on that cold and most magical New Year's Eve.
"They were still in the happier stage of love. They were full of brave illusions about each other, tremendous illusions, so that the communion of self with self seemed to be on a plane where no other human relations mattered. They both seemed to have arrived there with an extraordinary innocence as though a series of pure accidents had driven them together, so many accidents that at last they were forced to conclude that they were for each other. They had arrived with clean hands, or so it seemed, after no traffic with the merely curious and clandestine.”
― F. Scott Fitzgerald, Tender Is the Night
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