...And Everything Was Blue Except The Christmas Lights
something that has been engrossing my mind over the past few years has been the idea of love. a concept that has occupied me for several months at a time, however never throughout the summer ones, when my mind was occupied by other trivial things. until this year.
a friend of mine, who unfortunately is not as close to me as id wish, but our relationship continues to grow stronger and closer, let me spend a night at her house when i was too anxious to stay in my own room, and to be honest, couldnt think of anyone else i wanted to spend the night with. for some reason, she really stood out on this particular night. so i, hesitantly, typed a message and clicked send. asking her if she would want to spend the night with me and she, thankfully, invited me into her home. my anxiety grew more and more during the 6 minute drive over because i came to realize that we only talk in groups of people, most often when my best friend is present since we all share a bus ride home from school, and i am far from being a conversationalist, and even further from being a good one at that. i hesitated to open the car door and almost told my stepdad to drive back home, but something deep inside of me told me to take the chance and something would come from it and im grateful that i did. my mom, embarrassingly, walked me to the front door to speak with her mom and share some small talk before leaving me to fend for myself. to my surprise she had other family members over which sparked my nerves even more so. we exchanged usual Hello-Im-So-and-So-Its-So-Nice-To-Meet-You’s, then my friend escorted us into a second living room. her house had me in such awe. the ambience was so much more calming than my own. i felt content. she told me she honestly had no clue who the “family” in her living room was and shared stories with me of when she lived in the bahamas. mentioning her dad at certain moments. i dont remember ever hearing her talk about her dad before then. we shared laughs as she tried to re-light the room’s candle with my Danny Devito lighter, me laughing at her burning her finger from holding the lighter incorrectly, her laughing at me for having a lighter with Danny Devito on it. her laugh brought me to a better place. my heart felt lighter. i had no clue that the feeling would only grow as the night progressed. we not-so-sneakily ran up the stairs to the lounging area of the second floor. she and i shared a couch closely together and even more laughs. there was a day bed covered in christmas lights a few feet away from us that seemed so out of place yet so perfect in that moment. after about an hour of laughs and more stories, she rushed to clean up her room so we could watch a movie. and during the rush to clean, she cut a divot into her finger with her fan that she had taken the cover off of. once we moved into her room, i noticed more christmas lights. ones that lit up the back frame of her bed. we changed into our pajamas and laid next to eachother in an attempt to decide what movie we would be watching. by the time we made up our minds, it was 4 am and we had chosen a BBC nature documentary about life in the deep sea whose name i wish i remembered. in the time that it took us to pick, she chose to share more stories with me. these ones are the important ones that stuck with me. she told me stories of another friend of hers and how she was dealing with heartbreak. i felt my heart in pain just listening, but in awe at the fact that one could still love the person who is breaking their heart so deeply. she told me of stories of her on-off boyfriend, who i had no knowledge of until that night. with each breath, you could see her falling deeper and deeper in love with him. appearing more vulnerable, but so content in her vulnerability (and honest to god, also scared shitless). she ended up calling him on the phone that night and we all shared jokes and our opinions on Thirteen Reasons Why and actual intellectual conversations. well, as intellectual as one can be past midnight. the night was young and so were we. while she talked to him later through the night, i watched the person i was/am crushing on do a live video and felt content. their voice made me feel airy and sleepy, i was so far from wanting to fall asleep. i wanted to keep hearing them strum their guitar or make references to coolmath games we all used to play in middle school and talk about old cartoon network shows with characters whose names we had forgotten until that night. “duncan!” we all cheered when i finally decided to google the name of the Total Drama Island character we all couldnt remember the name of. my friend said something along the lines of “wow youre so distracted by them” but i was too distracted by them to really pay any attention. i have always been bad at crushes and the fear of falling kept me from pursuing anything more than a crush over the last few years. being vulnerable was something i had learned to avoid until now.
my friend brought me back to reality by having me read a blog entry she had made, and the most current one she had posted led me to write this. she spoke of love so fondly. of her friend. of her boyfriend. i related to her believing that the idea of unconditional love was something that i had never thought of as a possibility for myself. there would always be conditions to someone loving me. the thought that i would never truly be loved terrified me. even last night reading a journal entry from freshman year, id scribbled down, “i feel as though i cannot love anymore and what a sad thought that is”. reading her blog entry and my journal was like putting two pieces of a puzzle together. it wasnt until that moment that i noticed how much i had grown, mentally and emotionally, in just a few years. that even through moments of pain and weakness, i have somehow grown to still find beauty and love the people around me everso deeply.
realizing that self sabotage for romantic relationships seemed to be my forté, i strayed far away from them and found myself platonically in love with all of the friends that have come to surround me. with this love, came moments that pushed me to learn more about myself and the way others love and think. the concept of platonic love wasnt one that i had known of until my freshman year and had continued to come up time and time again over the years. i have learned and am still learning to not create opportunities for myself to avoid being vulnerable or wondering if someone loves me or not. i know there are people who love me and i have to continue to remind myself. over and over. in times of sadness, remind myself that there are still people in this world who love me. unconditionally. loving people and having the love reciprocated was something i never believed that i would have and now that i do, i dont know what i was thinking. the friends i have made over the past three years have pushed me to grow and change and adapt and heal all while still supporting me through those changes and allowing me to push them to grow as well. my desire to love has been inescapable over the past few days and i hope this feeling continues for days, months, and years to come. the familiarity of having people who are willing to support you no matter how deep of a hole you are in brings all the comfort in the world. realizing that romantic and platonic relationships should be equally committed to in life is such an important realization to make. in both, healing and change and growth should push each person further and bring eachother closer than before. love is such a raw and pure concept that deserves more than what is said about it. being vulnerable and feeling such strong emotions allows shifts and growth in life and such relationships. i finally know that love is so important. i am finally ready to love. i am finally ready to be loved.
this ones for keanna, for your blog posts, and the positivity that you spread. thank you for being a bigger part of my life now more than ever. thank you for opening my eyes to how special love could really be and making me believe that its possible to be loved. thank you for letting me witness your growth and how that has made it possible for you to love deeper. thank you for making me feel like a special and important part of your life. finally, thank you for inspiring me to begin writing again and for once about the good things that come with the future rather than the sad ones that came with the past. for this and more, keanna, i love you.
this ones for juno. i am unreasonably nervous when it comes to you because theres so much i have yet to know and i am always nervous about people who i have a crush on. (woop, there it is). this wont be as formal because i dont even know where to start. juno, it astounds me that you dont see yourself as the lovely person i do. seriously. i havent found another person who GENUINELY liked the front bottoms until you (and my best friend, but she doesnt count) and one of my favorite movies is Juno and your names juno and idk. i thought that probably meant something. it seems really dumb to have wanted to talk to you months before pride because we had mutual friends who always speak so highly of you and i remembered you went to ocsa, but again, i was too nervous to actually work up the courage to talk to you then and im even more nervous to talk to you in person now. i am grateful that we talk and that i can send you silly videos. you are so lovely to me. i hope the future has in store a blooming friendship for us but, since i have no clue what the future has in store for me and the universe could always change things, but for now, (with the courage that shay gave me. thank you, shay) i have the guts to say i like you a lot and hope to get to know you more because youre seriously swell and i can sincerely say i havent felt so strongly about something in the past three years as i feel right now so, for this and more, juno, i love you. thank you for bringing a smile to my face without even trying. as said in Juno, “You’re golden, man”.
i guess, this concludes this open-hearted whatever you wanna call it. everything before that night with keanna seemed blue and something about those christmas lights changed that around. so, heres a thank you to paul baribeau for “christmas lights”. the lyrics are so important to me at this point in my life and with every listen, i feel a little better than the one before. theres always something about christmas lights that makes things a little less lonely, like everyone being in on some big secret. it seems silly to say this, but i love you. thanks for enduring this with me. and heres for the christmas lights left on long after christmas has passed.
snowghoul
andulkaphoto
vaporwave
annaxmalina
stormborns
jbbartram-illu
titsay
janainaart
