Tonight, the air is so clear, the half-moon turning from yellow to such dazzling light, you could close your eyes and dissolve into the thinness of it. Is this all there is, then? The nostalgia, the sadness of the sweetness of the past? The dreams were built up so much, it reflects in the eyes of everyone all around you, yet you know somewhere even deeper than your sense of self that they are false, that what lies inside is somehow more real, more full, more hollow than anything anybody could have ever dreamt up.
He taught her love--the passion and wild recklessness of it, of throwing yourself into it without thought of self or survival. He taught her the quietness of it, the easy joys, the unpretentious, unrepentant, un-self-conscious simplicity of it. She also learned of destruction, of pouring out and burning out, of building up just to tumble down; learned to despair, enjoy and destroy and be destroyed.
Sometimes, you long for those naive beliefs of childhood, those black-and-whites that were so comforting. It is easy to realize that there are those for whom those still exist, yet you can neither really envy them nor deride them, nor ever try to go back--we all belive what we do and there is no going back once you tread that fragile path to growing up. Yet, there is that wistfulness, always, of a fast-disappearing belief system, though you have no idea where it came from, leaving you with a well-ordered, well-reasoned one. Perhaps it will feel like it fits someday.
She taught her of love, that it could last longer than the toss of fate, that it could mean something deeper than togetherness. She reminded her that the fact that everything that touches you changes you is not as trivial as it seems--and love, when it touches, changes you in ways unexpected. No wonder, then, that shaking it off is never so easy. It stays with your forever. Your only choice, then, is to wear it on yourself, like a tattoo, full of colour and meaning--or like a scar, fading and ignored.
You can never again believe that your sorrow means anything except what it is--a simple feeling that will affect nothing unless you choose to let it. It is only in fiction and perhaps the fictions of your imaginary life that there are grand moments to any emotion, rather than the gentle troughs and peaks of a single long wave of feeling. And you realize that happiness is not something anyone or anything can give you or take away, that it constantly flows from inside you, like life--if you let it.
He showed her love--the unreason and the reason of it, the fleeting, wildly unordered nature of it. That it can multiply madly, gush forth like a storm and disappear like a rainbow, when you're still basking in its beauty, but not really looking at it. He showed her the discomfort of it, the fissures and the ruptures in it, that you can jump into it, immerse yourself in it, float and resurface, get lost, get found, taste the delicate hues of joy, pain, and a million other unnamed emotions and just be madly confused in its deliciousness. She let herself feel. Just feel.
Is this all there is, then? Just you, typing in the middle of the night, to strangers who are friends and friends who are strangers? Just you, being and becoming more you every time you struggle to be you, not be you, hide you behind a mask, escape every mask to reveal you, fear the thought of being you and not being you? Is this all? Just you. Not that there was ever anyone else to begin with.
