Words, words, words

These are my little stories. Most of them are incomplete blurbs. Most of them are fictional.

[halliewrites]

I’ll probably never learn.

I might have to have my heart broken, shattered into a million pieces a million times, but I’ll still keep making the same mistakes.

Are they really mistakes?

I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason. I wouldn’t go back and re-do or undo anything from my past. I feel that everything I’ve been through or missed out on has shaped me into who I am. Which I’m okay with. I could do without the crying, the heartache, the shitty feeling of having to pick myself up off the floor and move on. But without those things, I would have nothing to base the value of the good stuff off of. That teacher’s words still stick with me. When you love someone you get twice the shit, but you also get twice the good stuff. The amazing, crazy, wonderful stuff. Maybe it’s the same with life. When you love life, you feel everything twice as deeply. 

[halliewrites]

holy bejeezus I'm practically buzzing with excitement. I'm writing and I'm rediscovering old characters and they have so many more interesting things to say than I thought they did, and certainly more than I gave them credit for in the past. I saddled the poor darlings with a lame boring story.....I'm happy they stuck with me. 

I sound like a crazy person, yeah? I'm glad. 

[halliewrites]

Jeez. I've filled 5 pages of a word document (single spaced) with words. Filled word with words, hah. But really, though, they've been pouring out of me like a flood. They don't make sense and they're stupid and the topic is ludicrous but they're words and they're there.

I mostly just really can't wait to take those writing classes in the fall. In my mind, they fix everything. 

[halliewrites]

don't mind me, I'm just typing up random stuff from an old notebook so it's all (somewhat) cohesive. Or at the very least, housed together.

[halliewrites]

We think we're complicated but we're actually painfully simple. 

[halliewrites]

Our lives run almost parallel to each other, occasionally touching and overlapping briefly when we cross paths but otherwise maintaining their cold, calculated distance from one another. They never intertwine for long. They never become so wrapped up together that it's impossible to tell which one is which. 

[halliewrites]

"Hey, Jude."

Every time I greet him that way I think of the Beatles song by the same name. But not this time. This time my heart is too heavy to joke, my stomach too busy churning, my mind too busy to allow me to think of another way to re-package the same not-so-clever remark he's heard a thousand times.

[halliewrites]

Basically

Basically I still want it but I’m more okay with waiting now. Which is entirely true and entirely false at the same time. I don’t know what I want. I’m an idiot pretending to be philosophical, again. I’m a child playing grown-up and a grown-up pretending to be a child again. I’m tired and wish I could curl up in a ball and say good bye to the world for a long while, but at the same time I’m so alive, so very alive, more alive than I have been in a long time, and I want to go run for days to get rid of this nervous energy bubbling up in my chest. And then I realize that I can't run for days, I can't run hardly at all without falling into a heaving panting mess of a person who can't breathe and who has awful form and shockingly little athletic ability. My eyes hurt and they’re welling up with unshed tears and yet nothing will come out because I’m fine, and I’m strong, and I’m okay. And if I’m not I will be. And yet...it’s sort of a miracle that I haven’t exploded yet. Wait for it. Tick, tick, tick, boom. 

[halliewrites]

Everything that's wrong has settled on my chest like butterflies. I let them go, one by one, and they flutter off into the inky night sky. They might be back tomorrow, but for now they're gone and that's all that matters. 

[halliewrites]

I had a strange and lovely dream last night. It was one of those reveries you recognize as such, then continue to watch as if it were a movie. I was married to a man named Warren. I can’t remember what his face looked like, but I recognize the swelling in my heart to be one of love. I have no idea what he did for a living, but I know that for some reason we were provided housing by his job and when I visited him at work he was throwing baseballs. The general idea of him was ambiguous but solid, the way things tend to be in dreams. I was holding our baby girl, she was asleep in my arms, her little head creating a pleasant weight on my chest. We walked together, the three of us, toward Warren’s boss’s office. While the two men were arguing, I was admiring my baby girl and thinking about how beautiful she was. Then I woke up because Verizon called me again, as they do every month, because even though we’ve corrected them many times they still think I pay the bill, and they still think I’m in danger of forgetting to pay it. I tried to get the dream back, but it slipped through my fingers like sand, leaving only sparkling particles of splendor behind. 

[halliewrites]

I knew he was there. Waiting. The thought both comforted and troubled me. 

[halliewrites]

Have you ever noticed how loaded personal pronouns can become so much more beautiful and loaded with meaning when someone’s talking about someone they care about?

Not just he’s going to be here soon, but he’s going to be here soon. Not she’s lovely, but she’s lovely. The emphasis is rarely actually there, but it’s always implied. The weight behind the words becomes intense and pulsing, like the feelings themselves have somehow infected them and taken over.  

[halliewrites]

I saw you smile today, and it was one of the most adorable things I’ve ever seen. Though I’d never actually seen you smile before today, I kind of decided that you had this sweet crooked half-smile because that’s what I wanted you to have, and I thought it fit the little I know about you. Then I saw you today, after going so long without seeing you. And I wanted you to smile for me because I realized that I didn’t actually know what that would look like on your lovely face. Then out of nowhere it spread across your face like a sunrise, and it looked just like I knew it would look, and my heart crept even closer toward your hands. I want you to smile like that because of something I said. Because of something I did. Because of something we are. 

[halliewrites]

You know that feeling, when you like someone and they like you back, and the moment you learn that the liking is mutual you get giddy and excited and terrified all at the same time? When his hand accidentally touches your hand and the spark sends shivers up and down your whole body, and you have to fight to control yourself, fight to keep yourself from grabbing his hand and holding it right there, because your hand felt the warmth of his hand and craves it. It wants to feel the calluses, the warmth, the light sheen of nervousness-induced sweat. It wants to feel the short fingernails, the bulky strength of a man’s hand that is so different from a friend’s hand.

That feeling. The one that blossoms when it occurs to you that that someone is thinking of you in the same way you’re thinking of him. The anticipation of a date or even just the anticipation of maybe getting to see him today, to kiss him and feel perfection, not dry and lifeless or sloppy and downright gross, not the feeling of an unfamiliar tongue in your mouth and the slime of someone else’s spit. Not those things, but the feeling that you’re kissing the same person you want to kiss forever. The person who makes you want to go farther than you ever thought you would want to go because you love him so much that you want to do whatever you can to show him how much you love him so that maybe he won’t leave, like the others. Like the other. You want to dance with him, to slow dance because then you get to hug him and have him hold you for longer than would be normally socially acceptable. You get to look up at him and think that he’s yours and that he loves you. You can appreciate the strength of his jaw, the sparkle of his eyes, the curve of his muscle or the curl of his hair. And you’re allowed to stare and appreciate the beauty. Because he wants to stare and appreciate your beauty too.

I thought I didn’t want this. I thought I could make myself not want this for awhile and I made myself believe it for about two days. But I do want it. I want it more than ever and I can’t have it simply because I want it so badly.

[halliewrites]

"I had a dream," she said, "A dream about you."

"About me?" I responded. I love it when I make guest appearances in other people's dreams.

She told me all about this dream, about coming to visit me and seeing me in my bright sunshiny house with my husband and my baby girl. I was happy, she said, and she knew when she woke up that she just saw my future. So now I ask her, when I meet someone knew, "Is he the man in your dream?" It's silly, really, because no one can see into the future and she's never demonstrated any psychic abilities before now. But maybe because I want it so badly, I believe it's true.

[halliewrites]

We’re at a party.

We’re talking.

We’re a little bit drunk.

Ok, we’re a lot drunk.

He leans in to kiss me, and it takes every last ounce of self-control I have to put my hand on his chest and stop him, just before his lips meet mine.

“Hey there, baby. You think you’ve earned that?’

This is the right thing. You really like him. You don’t want to be a random hook up.

He looks confused.

“I don’t go around kissing just anybody, Sam,” Not entirely true. “You’ve got to earn it.” I try to sell it with a smile.

“And how, exactly, do I earn it?”

“I’ll tell you what. I’ll give you my number, and you’ll call me tomorrow. We’ll go from there.”

He smiles the most adorable crooked half-smile I’ve ever seen. Butterflies explode in my stomach.

“You drive a hard bargain there, miss.”

He takes out his phone, and we put my number in his contacts.

“Now you remember to call me, mister,” I say. I lean in to whisper the last part: “’cause I promise you, I’m worth it.”

Then I kiss him on the cheek, turn, and walk away. I feel his eyes on my back and pray that I didn’t just make the biggest mistake of my life.

[halliewrites]

Meet Sam

His hair stood out in hectic brown curls, giving him a frenzied look, and aura of ever-present chaos.