hopefully, mika

or, the yearning never left this building

Charlotte Lucas never uttered these words in Pride & Prejudice the novel. Instead, she makes this remark in the much-loved and much-hated 2005 adaptation.

I have to confess, though, that I first heard these words in a soundbite in a Disney AMV. Correction: I first heard these words in a Disney/Non-Disney crossover fan edit wherein animated characters are cut and mishmashed together in devastating stories.

Ever the contrarian, I was determined not to fall under this category. I even developed a keen dislike for Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling In Love With You,” because what do you mean “only fools rush in?”

You know, I did my math. I grew up in the evangelical church, for heaven’s sake (sorry). I quantified the traits I deemed absolutely necessary (faith in God, a decent sense of humour, and kindness) and shamelessly listed them on cardstock I still have buried somewhere in my room.

But I am a fool in love and always have been.

I’ve written saccharine notes and letters. Worse yet, I’ve read them aloud while experiencing an anxiety attack (a true romantic!). I’ve sent them and received hilariously clinical responses and I’ve sent them and received no reply.

I’ve stayed up to talk to boys through crises (theirs or mine or both) and laughed with them about nothing. I’ve written poem after poem after poem. I’ve written really, truly, horribly bad songs in a notebook I can’t bear to throw away.

I’ve made economically unwise decisions in the name of love. The last Sonny Angel in the state? Sure. A plane ticket to get dropped so carelessly I didn’t even get a chance to hear myself shatter? Absolutely! Why not?

I have felt afraid of men, too. I loathed and feared their touch. Their disappointment. Their boredom, so easily attained. Their rage.

This past spring, I broke up with someone who, in a matter of minutes, shut my heart out for me. I’d spent several days agonizing over what I felt or what was best or what was softest. I deliberated with friends and even broached the topic with my family.

You are the best boyfriend I’ve ever had, I wrote in my notes, in my heart, ready to say the words out loud and end things. Keep it clean.

I should have known I can never do anything that neatly.

I don’t need to hear what you have to say, he snapped. I already knew it was over last week.

Oh.

As it turns out, I did not know that.

I’d experienced frustration in the other boys. Anger. Resentment. Even hatred, I’m sure.

But this boy was furious and it scared me. My hands had never shaken like that before because of a boy. His voice was so taut.

And just like that, my heart snapped up.

It’s never been easy for me to tell what was real.

One of my favourite childhood stories is The Velveteen Rabbit. I used to think I was the boy and that I’d make my own rabbits out of dolls and bears.

Except I am always the rabbit with the people I love. I chase after them, ears shorn and fur matted with mud. I wait for them to make me real. They never do.

So I pretend.

I pretend that it was never real at all, what was between us. I shove it in a chest at the end of my bed and occasionally, I take it out. Occasionally, I let myself cry.

Did I just imagine it? I ask my best friend all the time. Maybe I just imagined he cared.

Maybe I wasn’t smart enough, a concept which never ceases to sting a former “smartypants.”

Everyone says this isn’t how it’s supposed to feel. That love is safe and warm and when you know, you know.

All I know, though, is love like a wound vast enough to hold long drives and snickering over the phone and sunsets and Christmas cards and hands, eternally open and spilling all that’s in my heart everywhere I go.

And I’m tired. I’m so tired.

I don’t want to lose this part of me.

It is the part that bares my soul or scrawls bashful words, sealing them in envelopes which never fly like the ones in my stories. More and more, it feels as though posting is cringe and sharing is cringe.

Maybe it is.

Maybe I am the fool in love, velveteen and aching.

But I have to believe that somehow, someday, it won’t hurt anymore. And I will not have to vie and strive and toil away for truth, respect, or affection. I will not cry on my birthday and make wishes to weep over. I will not wake from dreams with an expansive void in my chest.

Someday, I will wake to summer sun or spring rain, to winter’s bite or autumn’s gale, with letters pressed in the grooves of my fingers. I will turn my palm over, leaving it open as the sea.

And someone will take it and never let go.

hopefully,

mika