Essay on heartbreak: Moving day, thunderstorm and questions without answers
The bee doctor didn’t come this saturday. And he wasn’t there the saturday before. On the other side of the canal, the lilac tree looked as if it had been burnt down, all the little blossoms had fallen off or been dried brown in the sun. Not a single sight of violet. The green in the trees and flowers, the bushes and vines had grown darker and the city had turned to a jungle. The heat became thicker, even though after sun set, you still needed a jumper or the hug of a friend or a special friend to stay warm.
The sun on your skin made things better. You had been smiling a lot more.
On friday, one of your now formerly flatmates moved out into an incredibly beautiful apartment on one of the most popular streets in your district. The apartment was also incredibly high above ground, fifth or sixth floor, without an elevator, and additionally, in a very old house, so one story was not the common 2,40 but 4,80 meters. You took many pictures with your disposable camera. Trying to keep something of this beautiful moment, someone entering a new chapter in their lives. Sweat dripping in your eyes and running down your back you strutted up and down the stairs and –
On that day you would notice all the things you didn’t wish to share with her anymore. Your thoughts were yours again. Your emotions not towards a person or for them – but for you and you only. From time to time things occurred and surfaced that made you smile and go silent. A little sad, but a peaceful sad. The peaceful sad that reached you, when you felt the wind going through your body and hugging you and the trees. The kind of sad you feel when you look at old pictures of yourself and look yourself deep in the eyes and think to yourself what you can’t share with anyone other than yourself.
A good sad. Grief is a process.
You deserve something so big.
The heat had been building up in the city, mounting in the streets and on people’s shoulders and foreheads, in their minds and their breath. A heaviness, a burden. People are like nature. As they are part of it. You can only build up a certain amount of tension until you crack. It’s just science. Nothing dramatic about it. Nothing spectacular.
The tension that had built up the last days came to its limit yesterday evening. As if we had inhaled too often, as if our chests had tried to hold onto more than we could bare. Maybe to remind ourselves of how full we once were of something lighter. Something better. And just like ourselves, nature had filled its capacities to the rim and at one point in the early evening, it overflowed. And like a big exhale, accompanied by tears, by a sigh or even a scream, the tension aired. Leaving our bodies. Leaving the sky and the air. And the first summer thunderstorm was not a small one. The rain rushed over the roofs and trees and streets, the thunder heavy and close. You kept counting to three, out of some strange habit that you developed when your dad told you how to determine how close a tempest was.
1, 2, 3.
1, 2, 3.
1, 2, 3.
If the thunder occurred in these first nine seconds, its loudness would make you scared. A good kind of scared. The one without thinking, the one without your conciousness. The kind of fear that you knew deep in your bones, that was older than you yourself and the kind everyone is born with.
Thunderstorms always struck you in your core. You don’t know what it was, but you felt it in your body and when nature burst out in tears and breath and shouts, it felt as if a weight was lifted off your shoulders. Like you could let go the weight of your worries simultaneously to nature and science lighting up the dark and washing off the dust and burn marks of early summer. Like you were the strings of a bowed instrument, part of something you couldn’t quite grasp, and nature striking your chords, all of them.
You had an appointment a few minutes away from home and under your raincoat you went out in the pouring rain. Jumping over big puddles, resembling lakes, almost slipping on cobblestones. The smell of rain clinging to your clothes and hair.
Your questions. They remained. Unanswered. Still looking at you, doubting you. Doubting it all.
On your way from the bus station back to your home you needed a break. So you pushed back the hood of your coat and let the soft cool wind stroke your sunburnt skin and neck. You decided to hand the stone in your chest to the wind, too. You took a few breaths under the eaves of the big beautiful art nouveau apartment complex. The thunder had turned to a soft chuckle and the rain was less heavy, now soft and more like a whisper.
Was there a place where the answers sat? Where they were waiting to be called? Where they looked at each other, knowing the solutions, the healing and help? How does it feel to have them all? To bare the power of the missing puzzle pieces, the filling to all the silence left to be so deafening.
Oh, if you are out there, answers.
Come find me.
Come,
find me.
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