Revising recent posts, I encountered many grammatical errors, some of which I correct and some of which I let be. I find that, sometimes, in the effort of correcting a sentence, a brand new paragraph emerges. It is as if, at least when it comes to literature, it pays to mend and fix past mistakes.
You can't live life hypothetically. So I moved on. But nothing like being heartbroken when you're fifteen. It wasn't a problem waiting back then, I had all the time in the world; and I was only able to do so only when I fell in love with another. Hence the saying: "The best way to get over someone is to get on top of someone else as soon as possible." That isn't all true, and personally I think that people move from relationship to the same relationship, going from a parental dependency to a conyugal one. We live life according to what others expect of us.
All of a sudden, I resolved to write, no matter if the theme or subject eluded me. But the words wouldn't commit to paper; I wouldn't where to start and I'm kind of sick playing to the tune of my failed relations as interesting and alluring as they may seem. If I were home, I'd be more in sync with the ghosts and exorcise them deliberately, but I couldn't. I'd find that, oftentimes, a change of scenery or a shift in routine usually do the trick. A subject presents itself worth writing about and then I focus solely on that most unexpected, wondrous and enigmatic muse that the writing process can be. In it, I can be lost and regained, I find a maddening reason or an evil good to explore. By meditating or smoking a cigarette, I could enlighten somehow the dark passages of unforeseen events that prompted me to sit down and write, write, write. And since I can't reason with enough leisure, tediousness sets in. And since the usual mild narcotics that would facilitate this process are nay, then I have to resort to random acts of improvisation in order to get the creative juices flowing.
And it happened then. I jumped from my blog window screen and opened Facebook on another, and then it hit me: a picture of my first love emerged, a distant cousin of mine, now married with children... how distant a creature now from the frail and innocent child with plumb cheeks, curly black hair and milky white skin, diamond green eyes. She's aged well, like many in our family, but it's a far-away memory now. Luckily, life doesn't play out in the way that our raging hormones want it.
And it happened then. I jumped from my blog window screen and opened Facebook on another, and then it hit me: a picture of my first love emerged, a distant cousin of mine, now married with children... how distant a creature now from the frail and innocent child with plumb cheeks, curly black hair and milky white skin, diamond green eyes. She's aged well, like many in our family, but it's a far-away memory now. Luckily, life doesn't play out in the way that our raging hormones want it.
How, at one point, it all seemed as a matter of life-and-death, now is barely a "What the fuck did I see in this girl?" How is it that I awaited her arrival every two years, when her family brought her home to spend the festivities with her mother's family in the torrid and desolate Caribbean coast of Colombia, the land from which I stem?
See, her family used to split Christmas' time and celebration between her father and her mother's respective families: one year, they'd spend Christmas with her mother's (my father's half sister) and the next year they'd spend it with her father's (no relation to me). Therefore, I only got to see her once every two years, the year alloted to celebrate with her maternal family. And the sad part about it is, the madness lasted me four years. She said she preferred to spend the festivities with us, her mom's family.
Since the very beginning, it seems obvious now, I was in love with impossibilities. First, we were first cousins. We were not raised together and only saw one another when we were in our early teens which made it easier for such feelings to manifest and proliferate, like wildfire but cousins we were nonetheless. Secondly, we were separated by two days travel in distance by car, or more than a thousand miles from each other. Heck, she was royalty, with a princess-like upbringing, private schools, parents perennially married and dandy, as if she were destined to walk along a path of roses in a garden -no matter how proverbial- that was denied to me. My father and my mother had long separated, I was living with my father's mother and was the errand boy of the house. She was even older than me a couple of years which in adolescent years could spell doom in your romantic aspirations. It was not meant to be. Out of shyness, I gave her the cold shoulder initially, she seemed so fanciful and classy, I kept my distance and my cool. But when I saw her washing her own clothes, a look of frustration I couldn't help but tease her,
Since the very beginning, it seems obvious now, I was in love with impossibilities. First, we were first cousins. We were not raised together and only saw one another when we were in our early teens which made it easier for such feelings to manifest and proliferate, like wildfire but cousins we were nonetheless. Secondly, we were separated by two days travel in distance by car, or more than a thousand miles from each other. Heck, she was royalty, with a princess-like upbringing, private schools, parents perennially married and dandy, as if she were destined to walk along a path of roses in a garden -no matter how proverbial- that was denied to me. My father and my mother had long separated, I was living with my father's mother and was the errand boy of the house. She was even older than me a couple of years which in adolescent years could spell doom in your romantic aspirations. It was not meant to be. Out of shyness, I gave her the cold shoulder initially, she seemed so fanciful and classy, I kept my distance and my cool. But when I saw her washing her own clothes, a look of frustration I couldn't help but tease her,
-Who would've thought little princess would have to resort to do the laundry by hand? -I teased her. She did not take it too well.
-Leave me alone -she warned, quietly firm and not in the least bit taken by my ball-busting her. We both repeated the same routine, same lines again, but her tone increased in bitterness.
I splashed the running water on her face and she put the same face in disbelief Olivia (who hadn't been born) would put when I jokingly slapped her. Not hard, not too soft either, but funny.
You can't live life hypothetically. So I moved on. But nothing like being heartbroken when you're fifteen. It wasn't a problem waiting back then, I had all the time in the world; and I was only able to do so only when I fell in love with another. Hence the saying: "The best way to get over someone is to get on top of someone else as soon as possible." That isn't all true, and personally I think that people move from relationship to the same relationship, going from a parental dependency to a conyugal one. We live life according to what others expect of us.
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