The Best Way To Get Over You Is Through Books

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I give you my things. Senseless things and otherwise unnecessary stuff gain revitalized meaning as I stroll down memory lane. In the blink of an eye, the most important things become faded receipts, Word files labelled “asdasdsasad” and “kjhkhjkhkjh” because no title can ever suffice, New folders which contain worlds larger than gigabytes, and selfies. Even if we aren’t really the type.
 
I give you my ears. I’m drunk off of pop songs, except that not all of them talk about talking foxes and roaring tigers. There will always be those that will slip between the cracks and will talk about you all of a sudden, upon which I’d either get showered by a bucketful memories or, on better days, I’d have the disgust to scoff at the song and press Next. But Michael Bublé is right on the money, along with his crooner voice and majestic piano and guitar: You’re every line, you’re every word. . . Sometimes, I’d gladly curse the world because the radio and my mp3 player aren’t being filled solely with feeling like a plastic bag and being a baby, baby, baby—oh.

But you’re everywhere to me. When I close my eyes, it’s you I see. I could be chasin’ beautiful girls all over the world, but they got nothin’ on you, baby. Ooh. We’re back in the club, bodies rocking from side to side, then Mr. Worldwide hijacks the beat with clobbered Spanglish. My heart’s a stereo: it beats for you so listen close, turn me up when you feel low. Its melody is meant for you, made for you. There’s no need to complicate, for our time is short; this is our fate. I’m yours. You gave your love to me, and I’m thankful every day for this gift. You’re so beautiful, and I tell you every day even if you don’t believe me. When I see your face, there’s not a thing that I would change.

And yet. I am in misery; there ain’t nobody who can comfort me. I think it’s safe to say that I’m officially missing you. The only chance we have of moving on is to try and take it back before it all went wrong.

You and me. We used to be together. I can’t believe this could be the end. That this actually is. That it has long been. It’s better that we break, baby. It is better. It’s good that we broke it, oh how underwhelming that phrase is, as if this is a branch from a tree that can be snapped in half, as if this is a yellow Mongol pencil that can be fractured with enough force, as if this is an hour and a half of regurgitated book-cum-lecture that can be cut in between for a smoke.

But now, the tears in my eyes are ever blinding. While tomorrow I’m sure the world will light up for everyone but me, I’m layin’ up nights waiting for the music to start; the best love songs are written with a broken heart, and it’s such a dirty old shame to take the blame for a love song.

I give you my nape, my sight. I force myself to walk while fixing my eyes at how beautifully black the asphalt is, eternally hoping that you wouldn’t be around the places I go. It hurts my back and limits my world, and sometimes I’d like to think that I’m a horse with blinders, tugging along a horse-drawn carriage) of tourists. I think I’m worse than said horse: At least, whenever the horse looks somewhere, it can look straight ahead, toward an indeterminable horizon stretching its vision to full capacity. As for me, I need to perceive whether you’d be in this particular place at this particular time—worse, at times I can actually sense that you’re actually somewhere near, as if I’m playing pretend superhero, the red- and black-webbed kind. Except I’m not saving anybody and I’m just pushing myself further down the gutter. A first-rate anti-hero of the worst kind, if you will. And yes, I need to perceive, I need to take a hold of the places I go, because I don’t want to see you, no I don’t want to see you any longer. Oh, not because I hate you or I don’t care about you—worse, because I cared, because I care a whole lot.
 
I give you my lips, my words. My compositions always contain veiled pronouns, the spattering of yous all over this vomit of words, and the overflow of rearranged words in the English language being spouted by my head is a result of past and present coalescing into an indecipherable lived experience. The whole language has been destroyed for me. Or optimistically speaking, altered. They refer to you and even if they don’t they really do and the words just flow like water on a stream, flawless, consistent, continual, speedy, perfect, timeless, cheesy, even. The little things sneak into it one by one as they refer to other people who shouldn’t mean so much yet they do, who I should forget even if forgetting is not moving on, who I ought to forget yet I’m never good at rules and shoulds am I, who I can forget yet I can’t muster the capacity to, who I will forget but those minutes I convince myself of this are overwhelmed by the reality of weakness and of brokenness, how I’ve been staring at the shards of a shattered mirror for far too long, not hanging on but living in the midst of the memories which are too vivid for sanity yet too mundane for insanity.

As per Henry Miller, though, the best way to get over you is to turn you into literature. You have no idea how I’ve done all-nighters in spades, only because this is my most productive time writing, and I become the most prolific laying this in paper, in the crippling void of a pristine computer screen, as I talk about my ghosts, my living in an omnipresent horror house of video clips, jpegs and gifs in constant loop over and over and over again, worse than the Repeat Track function, at least playlists only repeat one song, one voice, over and over and over again, but my mind finds something new in repeating not necessarily the same things, how gloriously faulty memory is, it darkles and brightens at a drop of a hat, it’s blurry and 20/20 all at the same time, it’s frustrating and consoling, a friend and a foe, a palace of words, thoughts, images, and important files in the hard drive of the consulting detective and of the arch-enemy.

I give you my surroundings, my world. You have no idea how I look out the car window, notice a huge supermarket, and in a millisecond turn away in disgust, for it reminds me of the time you carefully analyzed their documents, day in and day out, letting the day seep into the night and disappear, just so you and your high-caliber group mates can put on some graphs and make some presentations which can affirm that you are, as what I always say, the best. You have no idea how names became baby names become detested names, for we looked far into the future, together, we teleport into the everyday of twenty years later, where we spoil our spines within the caresses of welcoming sofa beds, together, not really productive, but together. Doing nothing, but being with each other is the most preferred activity all the same. You have no idea how haunted and creeped out I am as I walk around, I see me and you, us, vividly. We walked, held hands, didn’t care, talked about every little thing and some grand plans and nothing at all. Here, people hollered out and about. There, we shopped endlessly for what were our precious things: juices and books, cakes and muffins. Here we cried, there we ate, here you wrapped me in your arms, there I beamed at you with a smile I never understood how you find attractive. Everywhere we were happy. You made Home is not a place but a person enter my reality.

I give you my heart. It’s an illogical premise: You can’t even properly grasp it, yet you’d offer it to somebody so wonderfully, so totally? We never grasp its fragility yet we do it anyway, the man’s question and the woman’s Yes comprising the backbone of humankind, as Louis CK poignantly points out.

It is a risk to love.
What if it doesn’t work out?
Ah, but what if it does. 

image – Flickr / AnneCN