I am a flame.

I am tired of being numb, content. I am a flame, burning bright and raging through life. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

Short Story: Nature Makes You Feel

It had been years since she had been back to the mountains. Years of piling on layers of responsibility and the constant struggle to do the right thing. She wasn’t sure what called her back to the woods. If she had believed in a higher power, she would have said it was divine intervention. 

The familiar lull in her mind had settled in, followed shortly by the slow burn of muscles that hadn’t been worked in so long. It was a familiar feeling, and if she was being honest with herself, she missed it. 

The cold slid under her jacket, the one that she had to dig out from the forgotten crevice of her closet. She wrapped her hands around her waist, fighting off the cold, fighting off the memories that had begun to whisper. Phantom voices that dug up memories she thought she had buried for good. She paused to take in the scene before her. Inhaling the cold air as she let the magnitude of beauty wash over her. Maybe if she gave it enough time, it could wash away the darkness that marred her soul. 

She pressed a cigarette to her lips, meeting the end of the blunt with a cheap zippo lighter. She pulled deeply, willing the drug to calm her shaking fingers. She hadn’t signed up for this. The mountains were supposed to welcome her with open arms as an old friend. They weren’t supposed to force her to think of all her buried dreams, and yet here she was, standing at the top of a peak, being forced to see.

The cold had turned icier without the cover of the trees, but the woman’s chest was burning. She couldn’t bear the heaviness weighing her down, and something about being up here, alone in the mountains made her feel like she didn’t have to. 

Up here it would be easy to peel away the seemingly important layers of life. All the mundane experiences that were supposed to be pinnacle points in life. The ones that were suffocating her. She could abandon them. Throw them over the mountainside and walk away.

The cigarette was nothing more than ash in her hands. She jammed it into the earth, pulling a plastic bag out of her pack and tossing the remnants inside. Shrugging the pack over her shoulders, she tightened the strap, stuffed her gloved hands in her pockets and turned away from the magnificent view. She needed to make her way back down the mountain if she was going to make it back in time for her wedding. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

You know what?

You know what?

Fuck you.

Fuck you for making me hate myself. Fuck you for STILL having this much control over how I feel. 

You’re not supposed to be the nice guy. You’re not supposed to change and be this understanding nice person that is still such a part of my life because you still have relationships with my family. 

Fuck you because I’m the bitch who broke your heart and called it quits. I’m the asshole who gave up, gave up fighting for something to fit that was never going to. 

I don’t want to hear about how amazing you are. I don’t want to hear how kind and sweet and caring you are. I don’t want to hear it because every time I do, I’m reminded about how it took you until it was too late to start doing things that I wanted and asked you to do before we were done. 

So, am I mad? 

Yes. 

Because fuck you for still making me feel so strongly. 

Am I over you?

Yes.

But it’s mighty fucking hard to forgive myself when i’m constantly reminded about how much of a “nice guy” you are.

I wish you happiness and an amazing life. You’re a good person and a “nice guy,” but fuck you for not being nice enough to me. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

Feelings of today

You know what kills me?

No one tells you about the kind of break ups that are simple and heartbreaking. The kind of break ups where it just isn’t working, and neither of you have been wanting to admit it. The time has come, and one of you has to pull the trigger because what you’re doing isn’t healthy or positive for either of you. 

It’s not the fiery impassioned shouting matches that cut a relationship like a clean break. Those are not the ones that hurt the most. It’s the ones left with unanswered questions. It’s the ones that end simply and sadly. The ones that had two people who didn’t really do anything wrong except have pieces that didn’t quite match up. 

I’m feeling sad today. Not because I am filled with regret or because I miss what we had but because I was the one who had to do it. Pull the trigger. I was the one who did the hurting and the breaking, and while sometimes it’s necessary to break a bone to ensure it heals properly, that doesn’t mean it hurts any less. 

These lyrics are resonating with me today. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

#WRITINGPROMPT

“Because to you I am merely a monster, and in the end that’s all I ever was,” he watched her breaking, caving in on herself, what little fire that had been left slowly dwindling down into nothing but embers. 

He shook his head, “You’re wrong.”

He held out his hand to her slumped form, “Again.”

She looked up to him, those beautiful red brown eyes glazing over with defeat. The wind whipped her short brown hair around her face, and he knew she would never admit it. She was strong and so incredibly powerful both with the help of her abilities and with just her mind, but she was equally as proud. It would take an act from the gods for her to admit that she needed someone else’s help. 

She had been fighting on her own for so long, had made it through so many horrible things that would only make him go on a killing spree if he thought too long about it, but the truth was that she did need someone. And, he would be that someone only if she let him bare just a little of the weight that was crushing her. If only she would let him be the breath that would reignite those softly glowing embers. 

He stared at her, letting his hand hang in the empty space between them. She swallowed hard, her jaw working to process whatever was going on in that gloriously stubborn mind of hers. 

The trees around them groaned in the wind, and the night’s chill was starting to seep in as the sun faded away to the night that would bring a whole new world of hell for them if they didn’t move now, but he didn’t move. He didn’t break her gaze. Not when his arm started to tense up. Not when the creatures of the night began signaling their arrival with noises that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up. 

After what felt an eternity, he smiled patiently as the incredible woman before him took his hand and rose from the forest floor. 

“Alright,” was all she said as she squeezed his hand.

He smiled, letting her lead him because if he was able to bring her back when she had gone so deep inside the blackness inside her, anything was possible. They had a chance. With her, they had a chance, and the world would burn. She would burn them all, and if it meant he burned with it, he would. If it meant he would burn to be with her, so be it. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

Relationships...

My romantic relationship failed. Alright. I can cry and get over it eventually.

My relationship with you? My best friend and family. We have always had each other’s backs, but this sucks. I am older than you. I know you hate when people point that out, but its true. And, sometimes it matters. Especially now that you’re an adult who will make her own decisions. Just because I question things doesn’t mean I am insinuating that you aren’t intelligent. I’m saying them because I know what it’s like, and I just want to make sure you are okay and making better choices than I have. 

I want you to be proud of me in life. I want you to look up to me. Our relationship is an incredibly important one. We don’t do everything together, and we have our own lives. But, I always thought we would be able to tell each other the truth about what’s going on in life. 

I hate that you get mad when I try and give you advice or lay some truths out there for you. But when you try and “mother” me, I’m not allowed to show any type of exasperation. We are sisters. Friends. 

But if you want to be an adult and do your own thing. If you want to get mad at me when I try and give my opinion, then fine. If you want to talk to me like you know just as much if not more than me, then fine. 

Go on. Enjoy your life. Go crazy. 

I’ll miss you and all the plans we had together.

[fundamentallyaflame]

Maybe...

Maybe, just maybe this friend thing is going to work, and my sexual attraction to you will fade away...we’ll be able to be best friends and stay in each other’s lives and have fun adventures...maybe just maybe. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

Truths:

When I saw you today and you acted like I wasn’t there...acted like you weren’t a hurricane of emotions like the storm constantly thrashing in my chest, I couldn’t take it. The sadness and the anger at how easily you were just being with your friends...it made me feel even more alone. It made me feel even more terrible. 

I may have been the one who finally pulled the trigger, but you were the one who loaded the gun. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

Falling for the world.

I am a woman of my word. No man, mortal or immortal could ever claim me - not like the wind that caressed the mountains. Not the way that it swept across moon lit skies and molten sunrises. No man or woman could tame the wildness in my heart, could handle the uncertainty in my soul. I had fallen for the beauty of the earth long ago, my heart forever claimed by the mountains and rivers of the north, the canyons and waterfalls of the west, the oceans and beaches of the east and the wide open spaces in the south. No. No man or woman would ever claim my heart, as I no longer owned it myself.

[fundamentallyaflame]

Nature will never disappoint you. I think I’ll just marry the woods and have consistent affairs with the mountains...

[fundamentallyaflame]

I am so incredibly sad.

I remember this feeling from the last time I told you I thought we should “take a break.” Thinking of what it would be like to never hold you again, kiss you again, wake up next to you again...and I am sitting here trying to swallow back the tears and the frustration. Trying to remind myself why I’m even feeling like it isn’t going to work out for us when I love you so goddamn much.

All I’ve ever wanted was for you to fight for me. I just wanted you to fight for me and show me that you were committed and genuine about wanting to start a life with me. Not out of convenience or comfort but because you wanted it badly enough. 

And you don’t. 

Instead you remind me that you’re ad or you wish things were different and you just let it go. I’ve told you before that when I’m upset, I need you to approach me and talk to me about it. Letting me deal with it on my own makes me feel like you don’t care or have no interest in dealing with me until I’m all settled.

I am having to write this to remind myself why I shouldn’t just throw my hands up and say it’s fine, I can just let go of all the big difference between our personalities. I can forgive and forget the big differences between the lives we each want to have. 

It hurts so bad, and part of me wants you to know how unimaginably torn up I am about it. The other part wants you to think I’m strong in my resolve. 

I’m not strong in this resolve. 

But I also know that you are unapologetically yourself, and I cannot ask or expect you to change. Just as you cannot expect or ask me to change. 

I just want to lay next to you and feel your warmth. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. I wish we loved each other enough. 

I am so incredibly sad. 

So fucking sad.

And I don’t know how to handle it.

I’m told it gets easier.

I don’t know.

The hole in my heart, the ache in my chest, they seem like permanent fixtures, and I have no idea how to deal with them. 

i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you i love you...but i’m not as happy as i think i should be...i’m sorry...i’m so sorry...

[fundamentallyaflame]

I’m laying it all out.

Here’s the truth. It may not be formulated as cohesively as I’d like for it to come across, but hearts are messy. This is me laying it all out before you.

I love you. I will always love you. Twenty years from now when you’ve married some beautiful and kind woman who is maybe a teacher and comes home to you every night and cuddles with you and makes dinner for you and your two kids...even then, I’ll love you, and if you were to call me and say you needed me, I would be there. Without a second thought. 

“But, some other woman?” I know you’re thinking, “I want you and no one else.”

We have been dating for four years. We have built a business together. We have gone through career changes and different living situations. We have grown. Individually. 

I used to think that we could grow together. I used to think that it was enough to choose somebody and sacrifice was just a part of being with the person you love. I’ve also learned that there is a difference between sacrifice and one sided compromise. 

You think there is nothing wrong with us. You love me and I love you, and you are fine coasting through life until everything falls into place. I, on the other hand, feel like I’m missing something. I feel like after four years of dating, we should be working on starting our lives together, the two of us. That is something we should be excited about, and not something that we put off and decide we will do it when its convenient of the time is right. 

You talk such incredible talk. Sweet words. Sexy words. Beautiful words that paint pretty pictures of the future, and I love them. I love all your words and all the different ways you tell me that you love me, but I’ve told you before, words mean little to me when they aren’t backed by actions. 

It’s not your fault. Honestly, you haven’t done anything wrong. Neither have I really, and I think that’s what makes this so incredibly difficult. Because it isn’t enough to just love each other if you aren’t able to intertwine in both personality and soul. If you don’t make each other the best versions of yourselves. If you don’t compliment the individuals that you both are. 

And, as much as I have been fighting it, I don’t think it’s fair. 

I once told someone that I didn’t believe you could be fulfilled by just one person. Maybe that’s true, but I do know that the gypsy soul I have flittering around inside my bones needs a partner who will fuel her fire and ride the flames along side her because if I don’t have that, I think I will be missing out on the person I really want to be. 

I like the girl who does fitness and plays with her dog, but I really want to meet the girl who tries new things and experiences everything the world has to offer. The girl who finds interest in all the things around her. The girl who takes care of her body but also her mind and her spirit. I want to be challenged and scared and overjoyed and angry. 

I want to find a passion in life. I don’t want to coast through the lukewarm waters of a life that would be good and full of contentment and happiness. That’s not enough. Lukewarm is not enough, and I am so sorry. So incredibly sorry that I cannot convey to you the regret and sorrow I feel for realizing that the contented life is not enough for me. 

You are kind and loving and safe. There are so many women who desire those things, but I am not one of them. As much as I have tried to be. And as much as I used to think I was. 

This is why I have been sad lately, because I’m realizing that I love you and that love is not enough to keep you forever. It’s not enough for the both of us to be the happiest that we could be. Because you deserve to have someone love you for all the little things you do. You deserve someone who thinks about those little things and does them for you too. You deserve someone who appreciates you. You don’t deserve to feel like you’re not doing enough. Because you are. For someone. 

Me? I’m still trying to figure myself out. I still crave adventure and whirlwinds of emotion and passion. Excitement. And, I can’t ask you to wait on me to figure it all out. I can’t ask you to hang out for ten years while I go on my whirlwinds and finally decide that okay, maybe now I can try and settle and be still. I can’t ask you to wait on me, and I’m done waiting for you to be something your not. 

I love you. I always will. Nothing and no one will ever change that. 

But love is not enough, and you deserve to find “enough.”

Please don’t shut me out completely. 

I’m so sorry. 

I don’t know how to say it any better than that.

Love your friend,

Jordan

[fundamentallyaflame]

Falling for the world.

I am a woman of my word. No man, mortal or immortal could ever claim me - not like the wind that caressed the mountains. Not the way that it swept across moon lit skies and molten sunrises. No man or woman could tame the wildness in my heart, could handle the uncertainty in my soul. I had fallen for the beauty of the earth long ago, my heart forever claimed by the mountains and rivers of the north, the canyons and waterfalls of the west, the oceans and beaches of the east and the wide open spaces in the south. No. No man or woman would ever claim my heart, as I no longer owned it myself.

[fundamentallyaflame]

To the person I claim to love...

I love you for your kindness and the fervor in which you care for the people who grow close to you. I love the intensity with which you feel about an injustice done to the people you care for. I love your strength, not the physical kind - although you have that too, but the enduring kind. The kind that comes from a life of being disappointed and having to work for everything that you have. I admire you for these qualities. 

I love how you make me feel beautiful and sexy. I love how you challenge me and make me strive to be a better person - kinder, sillier. You help douse my flames when my emotions rage into a wildfire that threatens to devour me. You are my anchor. 

And yet...

I still feel as if I don’t know you. Not completely. Not in the ways I want to and the ways it seems to really matter. I don’t quite know what makes you laugh the hardest, and the time you spend with me doesn’t seem to be the time that you enjoy the most in your life. 

I don’t know the people in your life that make you smile throughout the drudgery of your days. Not until I see the effect their absence has on you. Not until I am brought to my knees at the ache in my stomach brought on by the sad realization of all these things. 

Our lives have changed so much since we have been together. We have each grown and molded into different shapes, and I had been so fierce in my resolve to believe that those shapes had molded together, still piecing together like that did when we first met. 

Today I’m not so sure. Not sure when I feel so pathetic in knowing you. In not knowing the secrets you hide in the deep parts of your mind and the dreams you smother in the depths of your heart. I don’t know you the way that I would like too, and I don’t know how to learn. 

Not with our lives the way they are. Not with all the hesitation still teetering from both sides. Don’t deny it. You must feel it too. It must be why you choose the way you do. 

And I don’t know how to move forward. After all this time together, you still won’t talk to me. Not how it really counts. And I just don’t know. 

But nothing will ever change the way I feel about you. I will always love you. 

Always,

Me.

[fundamentallyaflame]

Watching from the outside.

August 11, 2016

Today has been a sad day, and sometimes it is very easy to let your sadness swallow you up and drown you with loneliness. Being a flight attendant is a great opportunity for me. The possibilities are endless, and the flexibility hasn’t lost it’s allure. 

But.

They don’t tell you about the strange disconnect that slips its way into your life, sliding into all the little mundane moments you forgot even occurred during your day. You miss out on simple silliness with the people you love, the people who are supposed to be constants in your life. It is easy to force the emotion down, numbing yourself to the drone of working with a carefully crafted facade to shine happiness and positivity down on your customers. 

You’re doing fine, so you let your guard down. In those few moments of relaxation, you scroll through moments and memories and it hits you, the swell of loss is clawing at the back of your throat and tears prick behind those glassy fake eyes, and you’re sad. 

You allow yourself to admit it. You admit that the current state your in doesn’t feel like one filled with possibilities, and all you want more than anything is to fly back home and wrap your old life around you like a comforting blanket. 

If only it were that simple. As easy as changing the sheets on the bed, but a career is not a pillow case you can take off and change when you notice a little dirt around the edges. 

I guess all I’m trying to say is that I am extremely sad and unfulfilled and losing all the attributes that I love about myself and my life and if I am not able to get a better grasp on this balancing act, I am going to tumble and fall, dropping everything I’ve ever held close. 

One day at a time I guess.

[fundamentallyaflame]

Backstory // Machine and Mortality

The Great War left the new country of Adaugeo a wasteland. When the dying ended and the smoke cleared, all that was left was the vast ocean to the east, the mountains to the west and the barren remnants of life that used to join the two. No trees, no grass, just a suffocating heat settled over the Midlands that spanned the hundred mile gap between the two territories. 

The Towers governed the capital of the new country, rebuilding with science and man made machine crafting a glittering city of life. Those that were repulsed by the fabricated lives, the unnatural immortality of those who had sold their humanity to live as half human, half machine retreated to the mountains. 

They relied on physical strength and human intellect to build a society that thrived on nature’s many offerings, looking to their own abilities as prized possessions and not the limitations that the Machine Heads saw them as. 

Centuries passed and the tentative peace of rebuilding life and accepting differences seemed to hold true. Until the whispered legends of a supreme human, faster and stronger than any machine, born with the mark of their ancestors swept across the lands. 

No one had seen evidence of such a being, so the legends remained hidden, fragmented and illusory. Until a young child, bearing a crisscross of red and blue markings arrived on the doorstep of an Outlander couple’s home. A child of the legend. A child who would grow to be more than anyone could fathom. A child whose life marked a crossroad. The choice between the survival of humanity and the destruction of it all. 

[fundamentallyaflame]

The girl made of fire.

The fire roared, licking at everything in its path, destroying everything its stifling grip could grasp. She couldn’t help it. She knew that the fire would swallow her, but it was also mesmerizing. A kind of beauty in the destruction. An ember fell upon her sleeve, igniting a child flame from the angered mother. The girl stumbled backwards, wiping the flame away. She ran.

She wasn’t ready for the flame to consume her. The fire fascinated her, excited her in a way that she’d never understood before, but she knew that it was dangerous. Screams echoed, creaking and cracking homes fell to decimation around her. Then she was there at the cliff side, watching the black waters churn and crash below her.

This was it. A choice had to be made. Turn back and let the fire wash over her, or take her chances with the angry waters below. There was no hesitation. The flames called to her, they beckoned her closer.

She turned, letting out a tight breath as she let the flames engulf her.

[fundamentallyaflame]

He is the ocean.

I am a flame, sometimes burning slowly and softly, the embers deep inside churning with quiet calculation, and sometimes there is too much oxygen for my flame. I burn bright and unyielding, unleashing a wildfire that ignites everything in its path.

He is the ocean, lulling and unforgiving, hiding his treasures in the deepest and darkest parts of him. He is constant, a quiet calm even when the waves roar and the tide churns.

I am a flame, and he is the quiet that keeps me from burning myself into ash.

[fundamentallyaflame]

I am a flame.

I am a jumble of nerves and emotions. I haven’t read a book series that has had me this physically affected in a very long time. I wish I could write with the intensity and eloquence and honesty that Sarah J Maas writes with. Her book A court of thorns and roses has my stomach in all kinds of knots, but it has also prompted me to think of my own life and the relationships I have in it. Is my boyfriend my mate? Would I die for my friends and family? How can I move through my short human life so numb to the world and everything occurring inside of me. 

I think this is why I so desperately cling to adventures of camping and adrenaline filled nuances. I can’t bear the idea of being numb any longer. I am definitely a flame, sometimes flickering softly and sometimes fueled with enough oxygen to ignite a raging forest fire. I am all over the place, unable to control myself most of the time. 

I’m also rambling.

Something about this book has me looking at my life and cursing myself for already wasting so many precious years. We don’t get centuries to make mistakes and become what we truly wish to be. We get a few short decades to experience the most out of what we have. I don’t want to waste that time. I don’t want to keep my flame extinguished. I want it to ignite and rage because life is too short to be anything but bright and burning. 

No more settling for the mundane. No more escaping to books as the only true pain and pleasure to feel in the world. I want to feel it all first hand. I want to be the lead in the story. 

And I will.

Even if it kills me.