On Monday night, I stood at the bus stop in the rain talking on the phone to my girlfriend about her day and about her mother and about her thesis. It was raining and I was tired but damn, was her voice healing.
Tonight I stood at the same bus stop alone. I wasn’t talking to my girlfriend because I don’t have a girlfriend right now. I feel broken.
In the Blink of an Eye
In the Blink of an Eye, your life can change.
In the Blink of an Eye, you can turn the hallway corner at school and see a girl in a white jumper that gives you pause. You pause, not because on that day she’s stunning (she certainly can be), but rather because on that day something deep down inside of you stirs. Something at a very innate level. You don’t know this girl in the white jumper and you don’t know what this feeling is – but My God, do you have butterflies.
In the Blink of an Eye, the spark can come out of nowhere. That spark you get with another person when you know something is undeniably right about being with her.
In the Blink of an Eye, you can understand that you were brought to this very place and moment and that she was brought to this very place and moment for a reason, and quite on purpose.
In the Blink of an Eye, the world can disappear. A hug between a girl who has a boyfriend and a boy from North Carolina can very easily and very naturally turn into a kiss. A kiss that – I would swear on this – stopped the Earth from rotating for about 10 seconds. The type of kiss that writers write about. That filmmakers dream of filming. The type of kiss that everybody wants as their first kiss with someone. A kiss that you will unquestionably remember for all the days of your life.
In the Blink of an Eye, the image can pop into your head. You know the image. The one you get when you envision – sometimes in the most unlikely of situations – your future with the girl standing in front of you. On a busy Roman road, with your arms wrapped around in front of her, palms on her tummy, looking at furniture. Totally unexpected and totally something you’ve never done before. But somehow it’s comfortable and it isn’t fleeting. It’s real.
In the Blink of an Eye, the girl can look at you with arguably the biggest and brownest eyes in all the world and say things to you that make you look up into the heavens and thank God for inexplicably blessing your life. Things like “Jonathan, don’t go back to North Carolina. It’s not fair that your family and friends get you for years and I for only few months.” Things like “Jonathan, we have more things to do together. We have to walk on street at Christmas with big jackets and scarves. You have to see me play volley. We have to visit Venezia together.”
In the Blink of an Eye, your life can change.
In the Blink of an Eye, the girl in the white jumper can take away all those “I love you”’s that she’s said in the last 2 months. “I don’t love you. In the past or now. I’m sorry.” Everything else has been real, she says. She was saying those words for a month before you returned them to her. And when you finally did – on a cobblestone street in the middle of Trastevere – she wrapped her arms around you and pressed her body against yours as if you had just saved her from the deepest and darkest ocean in the universe. You know what that feels like? First to have someone react like that when you tell her you love her? It’s magical. It really is and it fills your heart with something not of this world. And then to have someone say they want to take those words back? I would rather someone cut off my fingers one by one.
In the Blink of an Eye, you can go from not having a worry in the world, to hanging on for dear life. That’s what it feels like right now. I feel like I just caught a glimpse of the summit…the beauty and the clarity and the views seemed spectacular. It was in grasp, but as I was taking that last step, the rock underneath my feet gave way. And now all I’ve got is one hand holding on – slipping more and more by the second.
In the Blink of an Eye…the girl that so suddenly came into your life, like a whirlwind touching down, could just as suddenly be gone from your life.
It’s real and it hurts like hell. Not because I don’t have a girlfriend right now, but rather, because I feel like it’s my fault. I feel like I keep blowing it and I don’t know what to do about that.
Something is terribly wrong with me and I don’t know how to fix it.
