Everyday's like talking in your sleep --
love is like a silhouette in dreams!
- Kimbra, Cameo Lover
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I'm normally ecstatic every year for my birthday, but I've just been extremely nonchalant towards my birthday this year overall. It seemed strange at first, because I truly adore birthdays; every time a birthday happens around me, I'm just all giggles.
It was difficult to articulate it for a while, but it was like I just didn't seem to... need it this year. I didn't need a day to remind me of how loved I am, because I already get that everyday. Every smile that I inspire is a testament to that. I don't need a day dedicated to me to remind me of that. I know that I'm loved. So this year, I made no plans for my birthday other than the resolve to spend it with my parents this year, in light of barely visiting home since last June. Even that, in all of its simplicity, was planned passively.
Regardless, there was celebration and love all the same, and I feel blessed for that.
The one present that I asked my parents for: eos brand lip balm. Not only is it round and therefore cute (that's how it works, right?), but the size of it is absolutely perfect for practicing my muscle memory for cell culture technique -- "Must open with left hand only! If cap touches lip balm, then epic fail -- I might as well just contaminate all of my stem cells right now!"
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I have a bruise.
I stood there, at the edge of the world, and I left with a bruise.
I don't know when it became midnight. I don't know what was happening when the clock ventured into the small hours, and it was suddenly my birthday. I'm not sure if I was 20 or 21 when I pulled the trigger of an irreversible chain reaction. I've never been good with timing, in more ways than one.
My persistent fallacy is that whenever I accomplish one feat of strength, I suddenly perceive myself as an impenetrable fortress. If I'm not crying on the drive home, if I can muster the courage to put my heart on the line, then I must be doing something right. I should have known better by now. After everything I've ever been through, I should've known better by now. I thought that because I endured the force of impact, all was fated to remain absolutely stunning.
I fell asleep peacefully, and I could even almost convince myself that the world never stopped turning. That the stars never held their breath, sitting at the edges of their seats, waiting impatiently for the next scene.
When I woke up three hours later, it hit me like a hangover. I opened my eyes, and what used to rest (albeit anxiously) in a cavity within my chest, was strewn across the floor, gasping dearly for breath and for the comforts of caution. I awoke as if fresh from a dream. I stared at the stippled paint of my apartment roof, my mind cycling on a constant replay. When I discovered that the sutures had been torn out of my chest, I picked up my heart off the floor, and found its flesh welted into deep shades of indigo, punctated by spots of navy.
Since the end of the Old Life, my heart has always been far too ambitious to come home unscathed. But this time, it was so much greater than just intact. It was cracked and peeled open, its fissures still stinging from their unfamiliarity to the overwhelming sensations of vulnerability. And that's far more poignant to me than a heart left whole and untouched, because that is a heart that doesn't hold back. That is a heart that has given its everything, regrets and all.
It's been more than a year since I've been that vulnerable. That breathless fear, that beat before the jump. In the last year, including The Break, including the waves of depression, including this amazing journey of ambition and inspiration, I've never been so vulnerable with another person as when I clutched to cotton and cried out the words, "I'm not losing my best friend for this, am I?"
When I held my bruised heart in my hand, it was still feebly whimpering from its exposure. Hours later, it was still coming to the realization that the dream that I woke from was not a dream at all. I reassured it, "You've been through this before. Don't sweat it so much. You already know how this will end. You're already aware that you are only heading in amazing directions. You're going to be fine."
Yet, it was still rattled. It was like a child, asking me to cradle its head, to soothe its fears of heartbreak and failure. Its fears of loss and hurt.
Perhaps before, I would have entertained it. But, I'm in the New Life now. I'm no longer that girl that spends weeks, months, years, just sitting idly on lingering hopes, settling for stagnation -- which is exactly why I propelled myself into momentum now. If there is anything that I know now, it is that I am not one to coddle my heart anymore. I move without a drop in momentum, and it becomes up to my heart to pick itself up by its bootstraps. As much as it hurt to say it this time around, I repeated the old, comforting mantra, "There will always be someone else."
The colors of the twilight hour are still beautiful, and the sharpness of crisp morning air still invigorates the soul. The world is still beautiful, if not moreso than before, because it is now washed over in clarity.
Someday, I'll be able to properly appreciate the immense relief that is still partially hindered by the freshness of this bruise. Just like the last time this happened to me, my every perspective has simply been whitewashed and resketched with vibrant shades of platonic love and ideals. There is no loss in value, and there is no loss in importance. There are just... no more questions. Mixed signals simply do not and cannot exist anymore, and I am extremely thankful for that clarity. This has nullified all of my internal conflict; now, I can just pursue this friendship wholeheartedly for what it is, has been, and will hopefully remain to be: legendary.
Bruises fade.
I'm ready to press on.
Through it all, one conversation cycles through my head.
"I'm very dependent on the notion that no matter what happens to my heart, my heart can heal."
"You're not afraid of the pain during the interim?"
"I am. I always am. But it's always worth it."
Always.