storytime – From My Edge

The perfect lover – Chapter 01

Just like that movie said: «In NY City, you’re always looking for a job, a boyfriend, or an apartment.» I think it is not just NY; it is a constant that every city has, and I finally found an apartment I can afford without missing any meal, so I need to move as soon as I can.

It is an old flat, tiny, and the owner said I could keep any furniture I want or through away everything I consider garbage. Letting me use the old furniture was a cheaper way of making me clean the apartment. Since it was not her stuff, everything was an absolute mess, and she only cares about the rent payments. The flat seems like if suddenly someday whoever was living there have the urgent of leaving the house, and after arranging half of the stuff in boxes, they just left.

I decided it was a good idea to spend my whole Sunday cleaning and organizing and my goal was to clean at least the main room.

When I arrived, the manager gave me a tiny key, and at the beginning, I had no idea what it was for? Nowadays, nobody sends letters, so I haven’t even noticed the little mailboxes for each apartment in the lobby. They look so ancient and romantic, like from another time, and I don’t know why, but suddenly, I felt curious and had some anxiety guiding me to open mine.

The manager stares, maybe thinking I was trying the key to seeing if it works, but his usually calm expression turns nervous when he saw I grabbed a letter from that mailbox. I jealously put it in my purse and hold it against my chest like if it was mine.

I go to my new flat and try to remove a box full of old stuff from one of the chairs, but it was too heavy, so I sat on the floor and started reading.

Dear Mr. M,
Or should I say, dear stranger?
I’m writing this letter because that’s what we do. We write to each other. I’m writing even when I know the letter will not reach you, and not because you can’t receive it, but because after knowing the truth, I’m not able to walk to any mailbox one more time.
I feel I’m not going to be able to walk anymore, breathe anymore, or keep going. I keep telling myself this has to be a fucking nightmare. I keep thinking about you, repeating our story, searching for the missing signs, trying to understand when all get wrong. Maybe it was since the beginning, do you remember how it was? Does meeting me was also something you planned?
I feel lost. I just want to leave it all behind, but I’m pretty sure the police will not let me do that.
I fucking hate you, but at the same time, I feel like I still want to be yours, and that scares me so much.
Always? yours, B

Suddenly I understand why my instincts guide me to open the mailbox. Writers search for inspiration in every situation we live in, and when we are lucky enough, a treasure like this appears in our life: a real passional love story.

I was living my own story, living a hard breakup, but heartbreak feels like nothing compared with the feeling I felt with the painful but lovely hate that letter has, and I have the urge to know the story behind, so I’m starting my research.

¿Qué mata al amor?

¿Que qué mata al amor? al amor lo mata la mentira, pero ojo que no me refiero precisamente a un engaño o a que te pongan los cuernos, que claro que eso para el amor significa un balazo en el pecho. Me refiero a las mentiras que nos contamos a nosotros mismos, esas son las que lo matan.

Nos mentimos cuando ponemos expectativas en el otro y lo juzgamos bajo la máscara que nosotros queremos que esa persona tenga, en lugar de aceptarlo tal cual es. La mentira está en que decimos amarlos, pero no es así, amamos la idea que nos hicimos de ellos y sufrimos cada que se asoma la verdad.

Nos mentimos cuando culpamos al tiempo y decimos que él ha hecho que la rutina nos pese y la pasión se pierda. La culpa no es del tiempo, porque la rutina puede disfrutarse y junto al café de cada mañana en la intimidad de conocernos recién al despertar, nuestros labios podrían encontrar la pasión de recorrernos. Y cuando llega el momento de dormir, después de darnos el rutinario beso de buenas noches, podríamos encontrar tiempo para mirarnos, disfrutarnos, sentirnos, tocarnos, para acompañarnos en el silencio o para platicar. Pero habría que dedicar tiempo y esfuerzo y preferimos mentirnos, preferimos decirnos que es culpa de estar tanto tiempo, no de la falta de esfuerzo o del descuido que fuimos teniendo.

Nos mentimos cuando compramos la historia de un amor estrictamente equitativo y no queremos admitir que somos humanos. No puede ser siempre 50 y 50, a veces solo podemos dar un 10 y lo más sano es reconocer que el otro tiene que aguantar con un 90. Pero sabes, mostrar nuestras debilidades siempre es complicado, ocultamos nuestro 10 o argumentamos injusticia ante el miedo de pedirle al otro que dé un poco más.

Nos mentimos cuando decimos que nuestra tristeza se irá en cuanto otro llegue a llenar nuestros vacíos con amor, negándonos a admitir que no existe ese camino fácil. La felicidad no viene de afuera; primero se trabaja en uno mismo y no hay manera de cosechar un amor sano si no se siembra con amor propio.

Pero sobretodo, nos mentimos cuando decimos que el amor muere. No muere, cambia o evoluciona y en ocasiones ese cambio viene con el sabor amargo de tener que soltar a la otra persona dejando en nosotros lo que se transformó en recuerdo. No nos queda más que entender que lección venía con ese trago, tratar de aprender de ella, porque te aseguro que si no aprendemos se vuelve a repetir.

Repetiré que aquel sentimiento tan fuerte nunca muere, que no existe nada más exquisito que disfrutarlo y dejarte llenar por él, que es un coctel que te embriaga y que sin importar la cruda habrá valido la pena. Y que lo mejor que podemos desear es volver a vivirlo con las lecciones de la cruda anterior.

Short Stories 01: Feelings – Grief

To keep myself writing, I do different exercises to reinforce my creativity. One of those is that I have a jar in which I put little papers with the name of feelings or emotions, and once a month, I open one of them and write about the emotion.

This time the story is about grief.

Since a month ago, I haven’t heard from you, but don’t get me wrong; I feel your presence all the time. There isn’t a day I don’t think of you, and I even believe there are corners in my place where your smell hides.
While I remove my makeup and get ready to sleep, you appear on my mind. I feel the fear of finding the ghost of your memory inside my bed that feels cold without your body and passion.

The other day I decided I’ll try something different, and when you appear in my mind while brushing my teeth, I hold your memory instead of running from it and let myself cry while remembering you brushing your teeth by my side. Just the way it used to be.

With my eyes closed, I imagined the way you looked at me with the edge of the eye while you were enjoying sharing the daily mundane things. You pass your hands through my hips because, in those moments, you love to touch my skin, and I’m pretty sure I heard your voice. I heard how you said: you are beautiful; just after I remove my makeup.

To remember the way you love me, fill me with nostalgia.

I broke down in tears; I broke in so many pieces I can’t stand up, so I sit to keep my balance. I can’t remember how much time I spend there, but when my body feels dry from crying too much, I went to bed. This time the bed felt warm and peaceful, like if it feels pity for me, so it gets smaller to hold me. So small that your smell couldn’t hide anywhere, and there is no room for your body.

Maybe the secret to stop missing you is to feel you, feel the love I have left, let it penetrate in such an intense way I can’t keep it, and then love escapes. Since you don’t appear more, love could only run away and never turn back.

Maybe that way, someday I feel empty, empty from you. Ready to fill me with another smell, another love, another warm body, and the prints of other hands running through my skin while I brush my teeth.

A little bit about me…

3 years ago someone broke my heart, and I stayed there for longer than I should. I’m not here to talk about love or heartbreaking moments, even when you could find in some of my stories a lot of romanticism and sentimentality (I’m a hopeless romantic, and I won’t change that).

I’m here to share my ideas, stories, and thoughts; writing turns into some kind of best friend since I start creative writing lessons five years ago. I always remember how my first professor makes me feel, I don’t remember his exact words but the meaning was something like this:

“We all tell stories. We do it when we tell others how our day was; when we share an unforgettable memory or explain something that happened to us, and even when we gossip. But some of us treasure doing it, and so we choose the most beautiful words, trying to engage the person who is listening by showing the story little by little, making them enjoy as much as we enjoy telling the stories».

When I felt broken and with no idea of how I could put my pieces back together, someone told me great advice: start dating yourself. Do you want to eat at that great new restaurant? Take yourself out to dinner. Do you want to go to the new exposition in town? Buy the tickets. Do you feel like sitting around without doing anything? Find a comfortable bench and sit. By being alone we can speak with ourselves and know ourselves more deeply, letting us be who we truly want us to be.

We can laugh about buying the most expensive dish on the menu to later discover it tastes awful. Or when after 20 minutes of seeing that masterpiece we keep thinking how can I understand a fuck about this. We can belt it out while we are driving and our favorite song starts playing and feel nostalgic when an older couple passes by romantically holding hands.

By being alone we learn to laugh about ourselves and to let us feel sad when needed and that’s how truly enjoy who we are. At meetings in our jobs or negotiations, we play different roles using a mask that shows a limited version of ourselves; we don’t need that most of the time.

Recently I heard Brene’s Brown TED talk about the power of vulnerability and I just love the way she describes wholehearted persons like those who have the power to connect with others. Those wholehearted people are the ones that have the courage to be imperfect and the power of connection came as a result of authenticity; they were willing to let go of who they thought they should be to be who they were.

Without any mask,

I’m someone who loves art even when I feel it’s hard to understand. I keep myself learning about it because it moves me.

I’m someone who loves novels. The idea of someone creating stories out of nowhere blows my mind. I believe it’s a perfect example of how amazing the human mind can be, It can be able to create and conceive stories with the only purpose of communicating a lesson, knowledge, or even just feelings.

And most of all, I’m someone who loves to wonder about life. My perfect date is to sit with a glass of wine and tasty food to talk about what we have learned from life, what hurt us the most, what makes us laugh or sigh. If you tell me about that thing that makes you feel passion, I will love to see that shine in your eyes that automatically appear.

To feel heartbroken was the best thing that could happen to me because while I was in a struggle for worthiness, I learned how to be vulnerable.

It used to scare me to feel vulnerable sharing the way I see the world with others, but now I love it. I am sure a lot of people see it in the same way I do and many others see it in a completely different way or an opposite one. It’s neither good nor bad, there are just different points of view.

So, I think about 4 sections for my blog, that will show what I found I like about myself when I put my pieces back together in a way I like them to be.

There will be a section about art. Maybe if I shared what I learned and understand about some piece of art, someone else can feel moved the way I do.
Movies or series reviews. But not in a technical way, like analyzing the performance of an artist, the photography, or the production; just sharing what does the story makes me feel or though.
My tales. So many years of loving literature make me write my own imaginary stories.
And finally, what I wonder about life. I believe if we listen when we are asking ourselves questions about life, we learned a lot.

The definition of courage it’s from the Latin word «cor» meaning «heart» and the original definition was to tell the story of who you are with your whole heart, while I write and share with you I’m practicing having the courage to be imperfect.