Forever alley

© Rowena Curtin

It was in that alley I realised I knew. And I told you too. When you asked me how I knew I loved you, I told you it was because I couldn’t remember what my life was like without you. Before you.

When you became a part of my world, you changed it intrinsically. I couldn’t recall what it was like without your long late-night calls, your random texts during the day to check up on me, our inside jokes, those silent looks that said everything, and so much more that made us ‘us’.

The alley’s name: “Rue de l’Éternité”.

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Dinner is served

©Jennifer Pendergast

It was a dinner party I didn’t want to attend. But my friends pressed on. “Just put on a smile, as fake as it may be and come. At least you’ll eat well, it’s guaranteed,” they prompted.

I pushed myself to abide.

I had no expectations whatsoever.

And perhaps that was the best thing of all.

That was what made it so great.

Because he was there.

You don’t know it from the start, but all it takes is one person to change your life. To make you fall in love and to not remember how you lived without them.

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Mutual desire

© Lisa Fox

“The moral from the story of Rapunzel is that if there is a will from both sides, a way will always be found”.

She smiled in that sweet mischievous way of hers.

He looked in her eyes, trying not to crack a grin.

“But there is more to that, no?”

“Just cling on to this part, though”, she insisted.

“It’s clearly a concept of finding a solution out of a mutual desire for ensuring each other’s company”.

Her eloquence was one of the things that he admired about her, and which drew him further into falling in love with her.

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Happy state of mind

There are some things you just know; it’s that gut feeling that is almost never wrong. Some call it instinct, intuition, fate, destiny; name it as you wish, but that energy you receive from within actually helps direct your decisions, even unconsciously.

He felt it as soon as he shook her hand and she smiled brightly at him, her eyes sparkling like stars in the darkness of the room.

The music around them was loud, but they heard nothing. For that moment, it was just them. That’s how you block out the world. When you reach a true connection with someone.

It’s inexplicable how and why. How we meet these people during the ‘right’ time in our lives; how we never met them before even if we hang in the same circles and with the same people; and why we come across them when we’re ready to truly unite on all levels.

Be it a best friend who becomes your support, your shoulder to cry on, your harshest critic, but above all your family; or be it your soulmate (if there ever is one), the one who completes you, who makes your heart flutter, and who gets you smiling broadly at the single thought of them; people with whom we connect so deeply are invaluable. Because they become the light in our darkest hours, the people who lift us up when we’re crawling, who make us see our worth when we refuse to do so, who help us achieve our targets, who assist us on our path towards becoming the product of our dreams.

We need people like these in our life, however rare they may be. Because, ultimately, they are the ones who make us the better versions of ourselves. And that matters more than anything. For that is when we are at our most productive, most healthy, and most happy state of mind.

Declutter

Psychologists say that we need our homes to be in order so our minds can follow suit.

Simply stating, we need to literally live in peace in order to find it.

It’s something you can easily notice: when your desk, living space, home is chaotic, more often than not so is your mind, and subsequently your entire psychological state of being. Disorganisation or disorder may cause increased levels of anxiety, stress, discomfort, confusion, and consequently lead to higher levels of irritation. We’re often upset and angry without really knowing why, but it all comes down to this: we need serenity around us. We need the minimum of things to clutter our space, we desire the order of our surroundings, the satisfaction that everything is ‘in place’, so that we can gain the encouragement and motivation to relax our own thoughts and find harmony within.

In short, we need to be able to literally view tranquility so we can begin to feel it.

A tune that lasts forever

©J Hardy Carroll

She remembered it fondly. How she anticipated their first date. He had announced it to her with a paper plane that flew straight towards her. It was their way of communicating. She was walking on air all morning.

He took her to a diner that had just opened and was the talk of the town. The food was savoury. But that wasn’t what won her over; it was the song he chose on the jukebox and how he picked her up to dance rock n’ roll to what thereafter became their tune.

It was their time. And it became forever.

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Words left unsaid

He had walked out a month ago, but still had his keys. The keys to the home they built together, the one that would house their common dreams.

They hadn’t spoken since.

She didn’t know what he was doing, where he was, what he worked on, how he was feeling. She only had her viewpoint. And that was biased.

It was pitch black outside when she got up. Even the lights had all been turned off. It was the usual hour she felt forced out of bed, too tormented by nightmares to remain lying there trying to sleep.

She took a pen and paper, rarely nowadays abandoning her keyboard, and this meant it was too important to type. It had to be handwritten to reflect the emotion it contained.

“At night, when I can’t sleep, I write to you. Letters, I’ll never send and you’ll probably never read. But it helps me calm down during the nights I’m tortured by the thoughts in my head. When the chaos inside me overwhelms and devours me. I write to tell you what you can’t seem to hear from me. I write in an effort to make you understand. To make you see that even a dragon hides a frightened mouse inside. That sometimes all you need is the reassurance and certainty of having someone next to you at all times, no matter what and above everything and everyone else. I thought that was you. Not to heal me. You wouldn’t do that. But to help me heal myself. Love won’t heal wounds. The feeling of safety and being loved no matter what, who and when, is what makes a person stronger. What helps them heal themselves.

You were supposed to stick around for the hard times too, not just the good ones.

We were supposed to grow stronger together, to grow with each other, helping one another to develop into the best person they can be. We were supposed to form a unit as one – a force to reckon with, a single corps against the world. We were supposed to be ‘us’. A power couple. We were supposed to be allies to one another. Not to demolish each other, ripping ourselves apart from the inside. We were supposed to close each other’s scars, not create new ones.

Yet despite everything – all the words said, all the actions done (or not) – I still wait for you. In the sounds of daily life, in the phone calls that ring, the doors that knock, I longingly hope it will be you. I see you in every single thing that reminds me of you. I still hope you’ll come into my darkness and turn on the light. The light that faded and is now lost. My light that I allowed to be extinguished.

Yet you never do.

That itself should be a sign. Just like all those things we didn’t do: the trips we never went on, the plans we never followed through. All signs. An answer to all the ‘whys’ that won’t let my mind rest.

Yet I still wait. Hoping even now for something to change. Because hope is all we have left.”

In the morning, she booked a plane ticket and left. That same afternoon, he used his keys again.

The making of a genius

He was born out of wedlock so had no right to education. He was considered an outcast and society looked down on him. Yet he managed to ignore them all – all those eyes who stared with loathing when he walked by, as if he had stolen something from them, as if they had become lesser people because of his existence.

He was curious of the world. Of how everything was structured to make things work so seamlessly. He was astonished by the way birds used their wings to fly or how water was present almost everywhere. He had a mind that was constantly alert. His thoughts would keep him awake at night and without food, for he was too busy thinking about how he could make improvements in an already magnificently built world. He wanted humans to go further. But they had to want that too.

He was a scientist, an inventor, a sculptor, an artist, a musician, a thinker. He was a genius. One who comprehended the need to go out and do things to achieve something. One the world acknowledged too late in time.

He was the one who proved the world was a better place because of him. But people couldn’t see it.

His name was Leonardo.

“There are three classes of people: those who see, those who see when they are shown, those who do not see”

“Learning is the only thing the mind never exhausts, never fears, and never regrets”

– Leonardo Da Vinci