Once In A While

I woke up early with a song looped in the background and in my head.  It was too early, the day has not yet fully broken. I went down and brewed some coffee, sat on the sofa and waited in a state of semi-darkness and half-wakefulness.  I went back to my room holding a mug, warming my hands and my heart, waking my senses from a slumber deep and unprovoked by dreams or nightmares.  There was a longing, a wistfulness of having remembered a life.

There had been many seasons and they had come and gone, along with strangers and their picture frames, phantoms wearing masks of bliss, subtle yet sure of what they had all asked of me. I had stood resolute, quietly and determinedly, to maintain a certain distance. There were other ties to consider and options to weigh. There were expectations and experiences that others wanted me to have, or at least try.  I had thought about them, many times and long enough; I felt it too early to stop dreaming for myself and start dreaming for two people.  What will we do for the rest of our lives? Stare at each other?  I get the romance, said a TV show, but I need a plan.  Love can only keep you alive until food had ran out and bills have piled up; then you start killing each other. And I didn't want that.  I don't want to stand against anyone's dreams or cause them to stop dreaming for themselves.  A plan may take all the romance out, but it keeps the love grounded to reality. If we live well into our 70s, there are still more than two scores from now until then.  There was no need to hurry love and spend the rest of a life together in defiant existence, begrudging the life you had unwittingly chosen out of passion and sparks.

I knew the other side of the coin.  Pausing a life never meant you can reclaim it; it never guaranteed someone's waiting.  Especially in this world, where the next best romance is dancing on the ledge or a romeo from some planet.  Pausing a life never meant the aging will stop.  There will be even fewer chances and fewer possibilities.  You can have all the plan, but none of the man.

Like so many other choices, I know I can sleep better with this.  There are many chances in life, some come once in a lifetime, others once in a while.  I don't know which one I took.  And there are days when I wake up early and nights that I sleep late because there was a life I remember, there were all these things I used to feel, all mixed up and jumbled and messy and heady.  And I'm not quite sure, on some days and some nights, if there's still that or if pursuing something means I had chased away others.

I have more than two years until all the digits of my age change.  I may have used up all my chances by then.  When I'm ready, everyone else has a steady.  That's the twist of fate on the choices we make.

It was still the same song playing, the voice male and raspy was building into a bridge.

Love only comes 
Once in a while 
And knocks on your door 
And throws you a smile 
It takes every breath, 
Leaves every scar, 
Speaks through your soul 
And sings to your heart 
But if I knew then 
What I know now 
I'd fall in love...

I went down, opened the ref, and scavenged for food.  Sometimes, I'm just really hungry.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Closeted

The Gym Chronicles I

Not my type