From here on out

Me and L got carried away yesterday and somehow we threw June 23rd over the board and met right after I left Mount Olympus. And I mean meet both as in “I’ll see you at 7 right under the clock”, and also as in “hey! you look shorter than I’d thought!”

I got there a good quarter hour sooner than I said I would. I wasn’t concentrating at all down at my cubicle, and when I realized I had been staring at the same unsent e-mail for the past 10 minutes, I decided to get everything urgent done and take the rest home because it wasn’t going to get done there anyways. So, I got an advantage. I was terrified of him seeing me walk towards him, something to do with being judged before even getting a chance to do so too I guess, so it was great being there earlier as I found myself a nice little vantage point: a corner right next to the entrance of the cafe-boutique we agreed on, had some steps on it that discreetly led to some kind of abandoned service door, it was great. As I sat there waiting for him, I realized I was so well hidden he was probably not going to see me, and I played an image in my head a couple of times where I called him out but when he did eventually arrive, not a sound came from my mouth as I watched him pass right by me. I sent him a text saying so. I gazed up a little bit to find him looking around a bit confused, but still couldn’t say a word. I turned my ringer as high as I could in the hopes that he’d call and the typical iPhone tune led him to me. It took him some seconds that seemed like hours, but he did find me there, all crawled up, hanging on to my legs as a 3-year-old who’s been told she’s been naughty.

He took one look at me and hugged me. I couldn’t even stand up as I was shaking so hard. It took him some effort to get me out of my corner, but I did eventually stand up and we went into a coffee shop instead of the restaurant, I couldn’t handle the stress of waiters and a check and all the shenanigans around that. A coffee shop was a much better choice for me: you order your coffee, you pay up, you can talk for hours without being bothered. And that is exactly what we did. Talk, and talk, and talk. We asked questions, we tried to sum up big chunks of our lives, we cried, we laughed. It was nothing like I’d imagined it, it was so much more, better, bigger.

There wasn’t any anger, nor resentment, nor any of those ugly feelings we were both afraid to find in the other. I mean, I’m sure those feelings are there and have been there in some level, but there was no confusion: they shouldn’t and won’t be directed towards ourselves. We are not to blamed for this mess we’ve been put on, and we can only decide how we are going to go from here on out.

It felt unreal, as if I was being so lucky there had to be a downside for all of this. I had this feeling specially at the beginning, when I saw that I even liked the guy. What were the chances of that? We hit it off, and before I knew it, I was ready for dinner and we were grabbing a table at a sushi place where we stayed for a couple more hours. We then said our goodbyes knowing that it’s only ’til next time.

But how could I get any sleep after all the commotion? At about 2:15am I managed to do so, though strangely I’m not the least bit tired today, I still feel adrenaline running through my veins (and the anxiety too, but it’s a different one, it’s not one that crushes me under its weight). In the end, the meeting was a success, and I couldn’t be happier about it. We only scratched the surface of icky topics and that’s ok, we’ve got a lifetime to do so. Of course I said I do want a relationship with him, how could I not!? So I guess now we are going to try to have that, I don’t really know where to go from here, but I got a feeling we’ll work our way through these bushes.

I did have to admit I can see something worrying on the horizon: I’m not willing to be kept a secret. It’s not like I want to shout it out loud or anything, who ever said a little discretion was not ok? (especially with so many people’s feelings involved) but I know that if lies start rising to cover up our relationship, I won’t have it. I’d only be hurting myself and reopening old, deep wounds. Why should I continue the lies created before I was born? I won’t take the baton of something that I consider to have been wrong and selfish, it’s not my duty, and it’s not my burden to carry. I just hope it never comes to that, for now I’ll keep that fear locked away, and focus on getting to know him, we have some good 26 years to catch up on anyways, much more if we consider the previous 10 years I’ve no stories about.

After I went home, he sent me a text: “You can call this day the one where you gained a brother”, and I thought “man, this is a damn good post title!”. But using it would be like making a neon light for my  stalky relatives, including the mother and the cousin,and an invitation for them to stick their noses where they don’t belong, so I thought of this more discrete, low profile, and yet beautiful title. And then today, as I was writing this post in my head, I was wondering where I’d listened to this phrase before, took me the whole drive to work, but it finally hit me: The Killers.

It’s funny, I’ve always liked this song since I first heard it, but I’d never paid attention to it before so I opened up the lyrics to it. It’s perfect, it fits so smoothly that it’s kind of shocking and it surprises me how I knew this or felt it without even realizing it. Why else would I have randomly thought of it just today?

“From Here On Out” 

A little birdie whispered in my ear
You’ve been cooking up a world of fear
Put your hands in things you should have known
You was riding in the danger zone 

Well you had us all fooled with your quarterback smile
And your crocodile tears there for a while
And my paradigm shifted, man you’re making me shout

Hey, from here from out
Friends are gonna be hard to come by
Left us wonderin’ what it all was about
He had it easy, man he chose the hard way
Walk that old, lonely road in the shadow of a doubt
From here on out 

Should our paths ever decide to cross
You may wonder what the trouble cost
That don’t matter now, life goes on
Hallelujah, the troubles’ gone

No sense in holdin’ grudges and it’s better to forgive
These are things that I must learn, to practice while I live
And my paradigm shifted, man you’re making me shout 

Hey, from here from out
Friends are gonna be hard to come by
Left us wonderin’ what it all was about
He had it easy, man he chose the hard way
Walk that old, lonely road in the shadow of a doubt 

Hey, from here on out
Let the bugle blow a song of peace time
Left us wonderin’ what it all was about
You may deny it but you carry it with you
Down that old lonely road in the shadow of a doubt
Yeah, from here on out

*On a side note: Brandon Flowers has never been a manly man and that’s part of his sweet, sexy charm. But these good looks of his are getting out of hand. Ease up on the tuft Brandon!