The other day, my lovely friend Julie mentioned that she was reading her livejournal, and it sparked my curiosity. I wanted to read mine again. I do it every few years, laughing at how dramatic I was, cringing at some of the things I wrote, groaning over the grammatical errors and the little girl I used to be. I started it when I was 14 and had just moved to Florida. I wanted something to document my journey, I guess, and to keep me connected to some of my friends in Ohio. A lot of it is endearing or at least only merely embarrassing.
But some of it… some of it reminds me of the wildness, passion and naïveté of youth. I don’t want to go back. Hell, a lot of that time was painful and confusing and, honestly, terrible. Moments though… I’d go back if I could to some of those. I’d like to relive those moments, those brief moments of euphoria and intensity.
So for the hell of it, I thought I’d share an entry I wrote in high school and tell you what happened, how I felt, and how I feel. Let’s go back, back in time, more than half a lifetime ago.
“I don’t really know how to feel anymore…
Shiny Toy Guns “Rainy Monday” came on my ipod randomly, after I was all hyped up from the Strokes…
I was looking up at the sun in my huge coat [it makes me look somewhat homeless]
and I wanted to cry. just cry. for everything i’ve lost
and for the future i’m not sure about.
you can’t understand, can you?
how it feels to know exactly
what you want to do
what you want to be
where you want to be
and the person you want to do it with-
and have it ripped away?
oh my goodness…
I don’t know how I feel.
at all.”
Ah! I remember this like it was yesterday. It was a winter day and I was dressed in this huge army green coat that fell to my thighs, one that wasn’t even flattering. But it was warm, and it smelled like home: wood burning smoke, pine scented candles and vanilla soap. I was dancing under the grey sky, listening to a pink iPod nano that was engraved with words, that, if I looked at them, would make my heart ache. So I didn’t look. Instead I held it in my gloved hands, shook to the Strokes song “Last Night” and smiled until my face hurt. Music has an effect on me nearly immediately, taking me to euphoric heights or slamming me to the ground and – below. That’s what happened, of course. The first strains of Rainy Monday by Shiny Toy Guns flowed into my ears and I stopped, my slowly repairing heart splitting open and through my hands until it oozed all over the sidewalk.
Why this song? Well…
I’d met a boy, at sixteen, who changed the trajectory of my life and heart. In my poems I call him Lion, and that’s what I’ll do here. He had watchful golden eyes that gleamed with hunger and fervor, predatory interest and loyalty, that made him my Lion. He was also a poet, like me. He and I are a whole story, for another day. We loved and lost, is all I’ll say. Shiny Toy Guns was our band, after the day I showed him ‘Don’t Cry Out’ and his eyes lit with joy, and wonder, the way mine had when I first heard it. From that moment on, that band was always him to me. And honestly, they still are. I can hear them now, smile with a hint of nostalgia curving my lips, and move on with my day. My past loves are merely that: fleeting memories of times gone by, an innocence never to be found again, the smell of the ocean salt as you drive away from the waves.
However at that moment, that time? My ribs cracked open, snapping like winter-dead flower stems, and I couldn’t breathe. Everything hurt; not the way that a fist in the face hurts, flesh moving, jaw cracking, spitting blood. It hurt the way walking into a funeral hurt, the casket open on the face of the one who was so far gone from this world that you didn’t even recognize them. First loves and first heartbreaks hurt that way. The “first love” itself is so ardent and true, so wild and wondrous and terrifying, that it’s hard to compare anything else to it. I’ve had pain, since, that eclipsed the way my heart stained my fingers and the pavement beneath me on that day, as the lyrics of Monday rain and feelings within broke over me and around me. The tears spilled down my cheeks and I faltered. I could see the future we’d imagined. I could see the stucco house in California with the red tiles of the roof baking in the sun. The echoes of his promise to one day make me his wife still rang in my ears. Blueberry pancakes and fresh squeezed orange juice under the morning glories and the vivid blue sky. Poetry on the walls, languishing in bed with pages strewn over the sheets, sunset strewn fingers and golden irises. They were torn apart like bits of a magazine collage, helter skelter, and I couldn’t piece them together again. Even the colors were fading…
Yes. I remember that day, that pain, that love, that heartbreak. My heart was a wilting peony. And now my heart is stars and sparkling faux champagne. But remembering that, even now, makes those stars throb just a bit with an ache for that time, that girl and that boy, that innocence.
I remember it. I’ll never be able to forget it.
Elisabeth Writing 