Days and weeks continued to crawl by, bringing with them the usual highs and lows of teenage life, with episodes of unusual depression and self destruction occasionally thrown into the mix. Aside from the ever present mental health issues that surrounded my every move I was also experiencing the searing sting of teenage love and lust. When Lucy called me and I heard the sweet lilt warm with familiarity and affection, it made my heart soar and my stomach flip violently over.
I lived for the moments when money and circumstance connived to give us a few precious days together, before one of us had to board the plane back to our respective lives. After each magical week or weekend of soft touches, intensely spoken promises and secrets slipped from mouth to mouth, to tear ourselves away at the departure gate broke another piece of each of our hearts, one tine fragment at a time.
On each occasion I cupped Lucy’s soft face in my hand, brushed my hands over the light dusting of freckles, wiped away the tears streaming down her face and kissed a testimony of my love for her onto her lips. Together we were something incredibly, but the sea that separated us was ripping us to shreds. We planned often and with fervour of ways and means to bridge the gap, to try and force the separate strands of our lives to intertwine, without either of us having to leave everything we held dear behind. The impossibility of this hung between us, an unspoken elephant in the room, but heady with youthful passion we built a fragile wall between facts and feelings, desperately trying to ignore the fact that sooner or later that wall would have to be torn down.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’ – Oscar Wilde
‘It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.’ Sydney Carter
There are remarkable things all the time, right in front of us,
but our eyes have like the clouds over the sun
and our lives are paler and poorer if we do not
see them for what they are. If nobody speaks of
remarkable things, how can they be called remarkable?"
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
In between the deserts of circumstance which kept us apart like two dogs in a ring there were periods in oasis. As months moved on Lucy and I planned for a wonderful week together, the longest time period we had yet had in each other’s company.
On the day Lucy’s plane was due in I was a wreck. I changed my clothes time and time again, worrying that I had put on weight and was no longer attractive, that the passion might have faded in the time that we had been kept apart.
Finally evening strolled in and my parents and I set off for the airport, me beside myself with nerves and excitement. Once we arrived I hovered anxiously by the arrivals gate, fidgeting from foot to foot, eyes trained on the door, waiting for the moment that would make all the intervening periods of loneliness and grief fade away, effervescent. As I waited my phone rang and my heart leapt at the caller I.D. My mouth rounded lovingly over the name Lucy and I answered the phone with a smile in my voice. We spoke briefly and then laid down the phone, both willing Lucy to walk quicker, for her to be in my arms sooner.
After what seemed like an age a steady stream of passengers flowed into the arrivals area. I scanned every face carefully, willing each new person to be the one I was looking for. Then I saw her, hair flowing around her face as she focused hard on reaching me, bright eyes sparkling with a smile. I rushed forward and hugged her hard, burying my head in her shoulder, breathing her in, so grateful to have the person I cared so much about here, tangible and within reach. Lucy hugged me back even harder and stroked my hair gently. Remembering my parents behind us I pulled back to reduce the temptation to seal the magic of the moment with a kiss.
Together all four of us walked towards the exit, Lucy and I chatting nineteen to the dozen, catching up on everything we had missed. That night we fell asleep in each other’s arms, home at last.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’ – Oscar Wilde
‘It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.’ Sydney Carter
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
The following days were as magical as we had been expecting. We saw an awful film and shared amazing kisses, we went shopping for as long as Lucy could keep me in Selfridges before I dragged us away and we ended the trip with a day out to a theme park, high on the adrenaline of the rides and of being with each other. Even a homophobic couple beside us couldn’t dampen the perfect day we were sharing with each other.
That night was one of the hardest in our history. We held each other close and talked the night away, drinking each other in; unable to stomach the fact that the moment morning dawned we would be separated again.
When I left Lucy at the airport the tears fell fast and heavy between us. Shakily I pressed a poem I had written for her into her hand and waved her off, planting my feet firmly on the ground to prevent myself from running after her and begging her to stay.
On the way home nagging doubts pounded in my head. This relationship was incredibly, the best thing in my life, but was the excruciating pain of each ended encounter worth it? Shaking my head I pushed the thoughts away. I loved her, that was all that mattered, and surely love was enough to conquer anything?
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’ – Oscar Wilde
‘It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.’ Sydney Carter
“The good things don’t always soften the bad, but vice-versa, the bad things don’t necessarily spoil the good things and make them unimportant.”
“Nobody important? Blimey, that’s amazing. Do you know, in nine hundred years of time and space I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important before.”
“If it’s time to go, remember what you’re leaving. Remember the best. My friends have always been the best of me.”
Despite the ups and downs surrounding my love life, life moved on. I struggled into school day after day, returning home more often than not, ghostly white and shaking like a leaf. My thoughts and fears were spiralling out of control, and flashback after flashback snuck under my guard, feeding on my current state of weakness. Desperately I grappled for control over something, anything.
Food became my foe once again and I fought furiously to restrict, only to fall into the inevitable binging patterns when my body overrode my brain. I wrapped up my problems and memories in numbers and stuffed them out of sight, focusing on the only solid, tangible fear I had, the fear of gaining weight, of becoming so repulsive that I would be left alone and unloved.
I also sought control over my other self preservation instincts, particularly targeting my need and desire to sleep. Night after night I forced myself to sit rigid and upright, scribbling furiously in my diary, doing anything possible to deny myself rest. Each time my head began to nod I jerked it back upwards, chastising myself for my moment of weakness. Days passed without slumber and I began to feel near high, as exhaustion morphed into over tired hyperactivity. I was a whirl of work, thoughts and ideas, high on the very feeling of pushing my body past it’s limits, on punishing this pathetic organism.
Last edited by Buttons. : 14-03-2010 at 12:23 PM.
'Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you.'
['There is only one thing we say to death. Not today'.']
'We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell.’ – Oscar Wilde
‘It’s hard to dance with the devil on your back.’ Sydney Carter
