Viva La Stories

When you hear me say it too, let me translate it for you. What I mean to say is, I’m so grateful but so scared of losing you. When you say I love you and I respond with thank you, I don’t want you to think I don’t love you back. What my heart is dying to say to you is, I have never felt this safe before. And I want you to know this haven of emotional comfort you’re giving me is so unfamiliar, it makes cautiously comfortable, but I’m so happy that it’s you. What I’m really trying to say is, I know you’ll never understand how hard it’s been for me to trust another person and I’m sorry for having inflicted my traumas on you, although you have healed me each time we talk them though. I’m hoping you will receive me and all my imperfections. I’m scared of what our past misunderstandings might mean for our future, but I’m holding onto you because there’s no one else I’d rather hold onto than you. You who continues to love me inside and out, so purely and imperfectly, wholeheartedly and spiritually. I feel our souls combine each time I sink into your chest. When you squeeze me tighter and hold me closer, enough to hear your heart beat the drums inside my ears. The warmth of your hands and your hands alone, when you wrap your arms around me is all I need to be revived from that dark and painfully familiar fog of doubt. When the past seeps through the cracks of my healing heart, making it hard to mend, it may be difficult to receive your kind gestures. I might be too much in my head to be convincing but I’m still here. Please believe me when I say it back, I’m learning from you how to love another person as selflessly as you do. When I return your sentiments, please read between the lines and understand I’m offering you a small piece of comfort within the fortress of my heart. Fearfully, and yet so much more easily each day, I mean it when I say, I love you too.

Sometimes I don’t know what’s real, desire or despair. Wanting something and being ready for what you wanted are two completely different things. I’ve always wanted you even tho I’ve lied to myself for years about it. With every new moon I give myself false hope for wanting you. Like I said, I never did. My preferences were always fuzzy. And I realistically realize once again I’m not ready and possibly can’t even have you. A torturous cycle all for a life that could very well be miserable and redundantly pointless. How long will I continue to live this lie. We both know we might never be ready for the unknown. Fooling ourselves thinking love will solve every problem. The problem is I’m a hopeless romantic who actually believes that. All this deconstruction and deconditioning of trauma, seems never ending if you ask me. So what makes me think you’re the answer to it all. A love so unbeknownst so powerful, so cinematically compassionate yet realistically life changing So let’s just keep counting our blessings. One day we might get “lucky”.

Beauty they say is in the eyes of the beholder. When I close my eyes I see the whole universe purely existing. Thousands of micro neurons of electricity sparkling like stars beyond my eyelids. If true beauty is said to be on the inside why is that we deem the most beautiful people to be those who selflessly do for others externally. What about that person who does everything for everyone? Is she still beautiful on the inside if she doesn’t do anything for anyone but herself today? Or if she does nothing at all. Is she still beautiful on the inside just by breathing. Will she be beautiful if she stops?

Life is so short.

Tell me, what should we do?

We just want to be understood. Better than we understand ourselves. To be seen in a light we’ve only ever imagined ourselves. In our minds, our hopes, and even dreams. But never before on paper. Until today. See me as the entity I was created to be. The energy that I am, the entirety of me. Consecrate that impossibility. Prove to me that you see me. Show me proof you’ve traveled to my trials and tribulations. Bring me the fruit of my love that I’ve been yearning for my entire existence. Pay the debts of those before you with the blood you’ve shed from my own thorns. Show me your scars from your troubles and your journeys. Let me know you as you fight to know me. For you’ve known not the war I’ve fought to know you. Compare not the depth of our separate battle wounds but allow us to share our stories and open our hearts completely and utterly at each other’s mercy. Together, in doing so we learn the depths of ourselves we’d travel to for love.

The air is much quieter now that you’re gone. You no longer linger in the shadows of my mind. But in past where you belong. I am free of you. Your vague dissipated memory is all that is left and it comes to the surface at my own will. My strength to keep you at bay is stronger than it has ever been. I am healed. Suffering is no longer my name. My purpose is life.

My heart has become a black hole. Think of me as like a collector. I collect things that make me happy. But everything that touches my heart like a magnetic endless well, gets pulled inside until it becomes forgotten. All that’s left is a memory. I must be a universe. If I want to be appreciated like Picasso or Jonathan Larson an like the stars in the sky, by the time we see them on earth, they’re already dead. We burn the brightest at the end of our time.

My fantasy is to live a long healthy and happy life with my husband, children and grandchildren. But that’s all a fantasy destination. The journey, the right now feels much harder and much darker than I have ever imagined. Much like a black hole. I must be living inside my own heart. Falling deeper and deeper into an abyss of nightmares, hopelessness, forgotten dreams and memories. Left with only fantasies of my brain as the only way to carry on living. Peacefully floating among darkness conjuring the sweetest of dreams.

Everything dies. A pet fish, a dog, flowers, relatives, friends and even strangers. But you know what doesn’t die, a teddy bear. Teddy bears aren’t anywhere near alive obviously. I don’t want you think I’m crazier than the average person. But for children, pets, the broken hearted, lonely humans, lovers, friends even grieving adults— teddy bears are forever.

I’ll share a secret with you. I get lonely most times as an adult. But that wasn’t the secret, I have a teddy bear, a few actually. I’ve kept them throughout my childhood, the ones that survived. Some were gifts from family, friends, crushes, and lovers. And some I couldn’t leave without buying. But that wasn’t the secret either, I think I’m building the courage to share.

I don’t have any favorites, I have special memories with each of them. I packed one in my bag for a first trip to Disney World. One was bought for me in England when I lost my purse. And few were given to me by someone special— each different shapes, sizes, gender, species and color.

And as much as I like to receive, I love to give. Most recently to my grandmother a pink teddy which keeps her company while her mind takes her on adventures. And to baby Lulu a pink bunny to remember her cousin while I’m 4000 miles away. It brings me so much joy to see joy in their faces.

But you see, the one thing I will always do is hold onto a teddy bear when I’m sad. Early in the morning or very late at night, one is always in reach. And that’s more than I can say about people in my life. We as human beings are a busy species. We have goal’s every single day that comes with a list of many things. But teddy bears, they sit around all day waiting to be seen, picked up and cuddled or even spoken to. This we secretly have in common.

They’re never busy, eating, sleeping, or working. Just always waiting. And they’ll be that way forever.

Why?

Because teddy bears never die. They harbor enough fluff, love, joy and hope to keep such things alive for us, as long as we’ll ever need.

Anytime, anywhere there will always be a teddy bear.

Sometimes I feel like a burnout playing pretend. They gave us makeup as little girls to learn to cover things up. I think by now I’ve become a pro. I have such a unique past and it’s not that it’s haunting me. It’s that it is me. I am a combination of all things good and bad, happy and sad, disappointing and full of potential. I like milkshakes and movies, expensive jewelry and some designers. I set a good example to little kids. I have very classy taste. Yet the part of me that lives in the darkness craving poisonous substances cries out ever so slightly. And having an addictive personality doesn’t make it any easier. I like something and I consume it consistently until it makes me sick. I want the white house and blue shutters with a porch overlooking the lake. And a room so I can paint. But when reality hits it snaps its fingers and slowly disintegrates my happy go lucky fantasy of my future.

Why is life so beautiful and yet so hard? I want things to be smooth sailing after years of hardship, is that so wrong? To want joy after pain, a decade of pure sunshine after decades of rain. I love you but I want more than just words. I deserve change. I want flowers and I want them pure. I want diamonds and I want them hard. I want the ocean and I want it clear. I deserve a better life than the one we have now. Grateful for the one we got, sure. But I will always want more.