Posts tagged with "human interaction"

A Change of Flowers

When I left, the flow­ers on my kitchen table looked like this:

Thumbnail: Dead flowers

When I got back, to my sur­prise, they looked like this:

Thumbnail: Fresh flowers

She made the bou­quet her­self — hand-picked the flow­ers, chose the colours, even made sure it was sym­met­ri­cal, know­ing my odd habits1 — and left them there to greet me from my jour­ney home.

I nev­er ask for these things but she does them any­way.

Which is exact­ly what makes them so sig­nif­i­cant.

  1. I tend to straight­en her neck­laces, her san­dal straps, the curls of her hair, the draw-strings in her hoodie/yoga pants… [↩]

Mute And Muse

Assume as nec­es­sary.

Why is it so polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect to show your feel­ings? Would it be inap­pro­pri­ate to tell you that I’m in love?

That your dim­ples are like hinges that purse your lips in the most adorable way, and I want to kiss them. That I want to have you here next to me, to feel the weight of your body press­ing against mine. That I want to smell you on my fin­gers, I want to fold my sheets around you, I want to feel your curls under my hands as I lath­er and rinse.

Because I’m sick of being polite and I’m tired of pro­pri­ety.

So let’s deal with this attrac­tion. Let’s not ignore what’s between us.

Wow.

A read­er sent me this let­ter (post­ed with her per­mis­sion, of course):

Almost a year after I had man­aged to leave the island behind, the room, the floor, the sheets, the rape — I acci­dent­ly end­ed up on your blog entry called “The begin­ning to the end” and it changed my world. It awoke feel­ings inside of me that I had for a years time tried to sup­press and scare off so that I nev­er again would open up to any­one, nev­er trust any­one and there­for nev­er end up in the same sit­u­a­tion again. At that time, all men were a poten­tial threath to me.

Reading and watch­ing that very blo­gen­try have had such a great impact on my life and will to become ‘myself’ again, to reclaim my body and to dare to move towards feel­ing and being ‘beau­ti­ful’ again. Your video grant­ed me the sen­sa­tion of how sin­cere, pure and giv­ing love and affec­tion tru­ly are when it’s shared and not forced. It made me remem­ber blocked out feel­ings and sit­u­a­tions and it made me start to long for some­thing that I had com­plete­ly shut out for over a year.

I have been want­i­ng to write you this email for quite some time, but I havent been sure of myself or if the “new” me (which is the old in fact) would sur­vive and I did­nt want to make this into a sun­shine sto­ry if it real­ly was­nt — but after many down­hills, tri­als and tribu­la­tions, the­r­a­phy and social inter­ac­tion, I am there, I am back and I am stand­ing strong again. Nothing will ever be the same, but at least I made the right choice, for me. I have always been lifelov­ing in over­load and even if I am only halfway there yet, it is still enough to keep me going.

I still watch that video every now and then, to remind myself that any­thing is pos­si­ble and that you can recieve “help” from the most unex­pect­ed sources. It used to make me cry, now it makes me smile instead, isnt that beau­ti­ful? I know per­fect­ly well that you nev­er meant to post that entry for me, but it helped me in one of the most dif­fi­cult times in my life and for that I will be for­ev­er grate­ful. Thank you.

Yours sin­cer­ly,
Emma

I’m at a loss for words.

An Unspoken Bond

I met her a few times. She was nice. Quiet. I was one of the more junior stu­dents and she would occa­sion­al­ly give me words of encour­age­ment.

But what endeared her to me was the way she inter­act­ed with him. A com­fort­able famil­iar­i­ty, an unspo­ken bond they nev­er overt­ly dis­played in pub­lic but kept hid­den between them, a secret they shared as if to reveal it was to spoil it.

Sometimes, they’d talk about their kids. They were get­ting old­er. Getting mar­ried. Moving out.

When they found the can­cer in her body, he sus­pend­ed class­es imme­di­ate­ly. He told us we could find new teach­ers with his bless­ing. I looked up their address and sent a bas­ket filled with pâté and dip­ping oils. That was over a year ago.

They buried her last Wednesday.

And as much as I’d like to do some­thing, any­thing to make him feel bet­ter — offer my con­do­lences, tell him he has an ear — there isn’t any­thing I can do. Nothing will make up for his loss.

Our bond will remain unspo­ken too.