Ostara

Dear lover

Are we ever going to talk again? I can't pretend that I'm better than this - better than you. Sometimes I feel my heart is working backwards, a mind so big that she can't recognize whether it's time to leave or to stay in comfort. To fall in love is to fall into the winds of change.

Perhaps she is the wind. Perhaps the story she's told herself all these years isn't true and she can't put her emotions on the back-burner. Wouldn't it be so much easier? To be one with the wind, both light and airy, new and shiny, delicate and apart. Never connected with love, with the ones that can leave.

I knew it was inevitable from the moment I was born that I would be cursed to long for dark brooding eyes and wish for a man that would never notice me. For he would notice the beautiful sprite instead.

I've heard many say that it is better to put our emotions away than to allow ourselves to feel them. Perhaps that is the reason I longed for antidepressants. How else then would I have found you holed up in your room with the blinds drawn to block the streetlamp light?

You thought you were the first one I ever loved. As if I didn't fall for nerdy glasses, for lanky bodies, and brooding, princely hearts. I wasn't enough.

I waited for the perfect guy, but I never considered he might have his own thoughts about what constitutes the perfect girl. You see, I was convinced that if I was just honest and tried the best with myself, I would succeed in the game. Too late did I see how deep the game of love could go.

There were girls better than me in every way - mousy, curvy, dark-skinned, blonde, troubled, Christian, pure, and with whiter teeth. Than there were those girls that had every guy hanging by a thread, but couldn't choose just once.

Flaming red hair seemed to be the defining characteristics of the most wanted of these girls. One night, this short haired, red-headed girl took my face in her hands and kissed me with her soft, delicate lips. I knew then how much better it would be to kiss her than it ever would be for someone to kiss me. She wanted to leave me with that.

Of course, I went to bed every night imagining the love I wanted. The dark, brooding man who had me alone to himself, and with all the anticipation of what were were going to do. My friend Elizabeth as convinced that I was obsessed with the idea of romantic love. She held me against her big, fat breasts as if convince I could move my fence line and make room for her.

You pour your energy over every semi-nude woman asking for cash and demanding to be worshipped. You block me again, as you always have, determined to drain your wallet and soil your marriage.

It shouldn't be my fucking concern what you do, but I'm obsessed. I'm addicted to loving you.

It takes a while to be married. It's a game to even be in the running. Let's see who wins first - the one who cares the least, the one who has the "just-right amount" of trauma, with a perfect kind of Disney beauty.

We pour our energy over the possibilities - scrambling to figure out where we could go and who we could be. We imagine ourselves with that race, in that job, living at this new place, with X, Y, and Z - the things we would have to buy in order to stay ahead in the game.

So is the daughter of air - always ahead of the new social norms with something to surprise the crowd with. She's ahead of her time. Classmates are obsessed with her smoky eyeshadow, with her weird (and bad) taste of music) and the witty if not irregular writings she posts on her FictionPress for her INTJ friends to see with the hope that, one day, this will all make sense.

When was it that you decided you were no longer into me?

Was it when I bought you the yellow roses? Did I just meet with you one-too-many times, or text you too often?

Why was it that you were worried about the amount of time you spent with me, ending every meeting briefly? You told me I was too needy. I suppose I was, or that the time I spent with you made me too irrevocably happy. I look back on those times in envy of my innocence and in dread, knowing the next person I love (if there will ever be a next) will be someone I will scare off in the exact same way.

If only air was my element and this didn't matter at all. Wish I could tell myself that "If this man doesn't want to be with you, move on. There are other fish in the sea." I would move on so easily from things if I just didn't care - from grudges that people keep against me, from past relationships that failed miserably, and from the places where my trauma remains buried.

They'll call this a "depression." I used to think this was true. I felt way too long to long for a lover I wasn't sure even existed. Memories of him swim in a past-life river folding far beyond my present reality.

I've often wondered many times if this life were an atonement for the sins of the past. In many ways, I've never had a lover. I've only ever longed, been abandoned, or abused. I've never been really liked by anybody, and I won't stand firm in anyone's memory as "The time my friend took me to Vegas" or "Remember when we spray-painted that skyscraper?"

I won't have a famous Instagram where people pour over my photos, wondering what this glamorous girl was feeling in that moment. Hell, even the mind I've so nurtured over the years will be forgotten too, these words rendering meaningless over time, this book lost in the algorithm matrix that is the internet.

In the end, I give up my voice. My power. My desire to be sensual, to be financially-stable, to be liked, commanding, philosophical, famous, etc. I cannot be outside of myself.

At some point, I'll surrender. I do not think I'm at this point yet because you are not here and that means there is something left to work on. That will be given up too - like Inanna who saw that pretty things weren't enough to survive the Underworld.

I'm forgetting myself now. The daughter of air, the muse of your groin, your desire in the middle of the night for jet-black hair and pearly whites. Someday I'll fully disappear and leave you for your killer wife. Your secret knife.

Then there's a rush of wind, and a response.

"I'm coming. Don't you see it's true? I'm coming back to you. All the roads won't do. I've wanted to be free, same as you.

I've wanted to be free from the thoughts of you. What your image could make me do. How I will cry into you, and come apart around you.

Eventually, it's easy to see, how we erect walls. Using windows to keep out the unwanted. Hiding with screens, books, and money. How the world takes over so quickly.

The world has taken over you, and Gaia becomes your bones. In every way, your heart has changed, Demanding answers instead of questions. Jealous of any slight competition.

The world ahs hardened you to become bewitching, guilted, entrancing, intoxicating, mistrusting, and calculating. You will go deeper than you ever thought too. You must lose everything before you come back again. This is what you told me. THIS is what you wanted."