The days of doldrums

The following is a little something I came up with tonight. the first line is where my hook came: 'A long time ago in a land not so far away, I thought I fell in love.' The key to that sentence is, of course, the term "thought" which is exactly what I intended. The chapter is titled: The days of doldrums and is depicting a relationship the main protagonist has been involved in without getting in too deep yet... they are not yet in 'love' at this point of their story and, cliche as it may be, this is the male's reasoning for being more cautious... a bruised heart is a slow heal... 

I hope this is something you all enjoy!

A long time ago in a land not so far away, I thought I fell in love. But that is the thing about youth, and it’s not like I was a baby or even a teenager in puppy love, but youth has a tendency to make you feel like that moment is the only moment that matters, everything is magnified in importance, even those things which lack not only importance, but true immediacy. The truth is, a woman came into a world like a hurricane, stirring up everything in her path and leaving nothing behind but wreckage. Feeling like everything was true in the moment, friendships, feelings, future, all of it was a mirage stirred up by the hurricane force winds blowing through a life uninterrupted. We met, we fell in love. Or so I thought. But when the hurricane was gone I was left picking up the battered pieces of a shoreline directly in the path of the eye of the hurricane. Sustained winds lasting a lifetime. When in this hurricane, it’s as if we are in the eye, calmness in the moment, and never see the destruction and devastation left in its wake. That is the life of a life filled with false love and a future so bright it becomes bleakness and darkness.

Livvy was not that love of long ago; not a hurricane in the moment and hopefully not a hurricane in the rearview. The crazy Lisa Dixon, though, she had left an imprint that would be difficult to replace and I was not in any mood to feel as if that hurricane were resurfacing as some new and mysterious tropical storm. Friends I had made, a life I had established all gone with hurricane force winds of change and destiny. In a sublimely upsetting to the point of anger moment, to think that the lies we tell ourselves, the lies we need to believe to look comfortably at the reflection in the mirror, those lies that we think spare another, come back to haunt not the person telling the lie, but its recipient. So busy worrying solely about our own feelings we lose sight of how our words destroy more than just a single moment, but an entire future of hope built upon the lies we continued to tell ourselves leading up to that final lie. Everyone can accept whatever might have happened in response to the final lie, except, of course, the originator of the lie. And is that not confusing? Of course it is, that’s the point. Men and women lie every day and in no way are their lies intended to do anything other than make their own comfort levels acceptable. Consequences be damned. The truth is, those things we do after love leaves the heart cannot be fully explained. Science has tried oh so hard to explain love. We look to things like the need to survive as the basis of love, but the inexplicable nature of the concept is something that makes many men and women alike act as if not the rational side of our mind is completely overtaken by emotion beyond our control. Try as we might, we cannot reason with our own heart.

But it should tell us something about the heart and soul of someone so callous with our irrationality as to not just toss us aside, but to show an affront even when those people who should have less reason to be accepting of the subsequent faults that inexorably follow a relationship which has been swarmed by the killer bees of irrationality than does the provocateur. When friends of the departed are more willing to accept the flaws of the discarded than is the former love, then maybe it was never really love at all, just a series of lies destined to minimize the heart of man, a heart of darkness ensues, a heart that will wallow in the pits of hell until someday, maybe someone will have the patience to throw your bullshit past aside and row that canoe alongside.