Everything

Froth filled waves licked my ankles. It was just 10am, but the sun shone brighter than I ever thought it could. It reflected on the water until my sister became a glistening blur of colours and smiles. I liked her that way. The beach was still empty at that hour on a Sunday– it was as if the entire sea was ours to keep, the tide dancing at the tips of our fingers. We danced with it.

And in the midst of all the frolicking and salt water splashing, my eyes flickered to my mum. She sat on the blanket under our umbrella, not because the sun’s beauty was too much for her, but because hers would have been too much for the sun. But her eyes weren’t focused up there anyway. Or on the coast’s rugged cliffs or the crystal blue sky. Instead, they stared into a screen.

I bit my tongue at first, held it in, waited for her to realise. She didn’t. Most people don’t.

“Put the phone down, Mum.”

“Why?” She asked, the line of her furrowed eyebrows grazing the tops of her sunglasses, shielding her gaze from me. I didn’t need to see – I could picture what it looked like. “What else am I supposed to do?”

I must have rolled my eyes in typical teenager fashion, but I tattooed the line somewhere onto my brain for a later date.

Had I replied, she would have laughed anyway. Because the real answer to her question was: nothing. She didn’t need to jump up and dive headfirst into the water or start jogging along the shore. She didn’t need to busy her fingers in making a sandcastle or dig a hole in which to bury my dad – that could come later.

All she needed was to look up, allow her eyes to wander, let the saltwater breeze waft through her nose until the stress of the week before drifted away, soon becoming little more than a distant memory. All she needed was to sit and feel the ripples of sand across her feet, feel the strength of her legs beneath her.

All she needed was to be.

Life doesn’t always have to be about finding something to do. It isn’t about planning out every second. It’s about using every second, taking each moment to inhale and exhale and remember everything you love about the humble little life you’re living. The intensity of that first sip of coffee in the morning and the smell of the lavender bush you walk past every day. The animal shaped clouds and the way the strings of your guitar echo in the evening – all that you miss if your eyes are focused elsewhere. All that you miss if you make your life a constant cycle of doing, and craving, and doing some more.  

Sometimes nothing can be everything.

Sonder

There’s something about airports.

The feeling of being surrounded by countless lives so drastically different from your own. But just as vivid, just as complex. The feeling that all those unknown faces and anonymous names have gathered in a single space. Snippets of conversations drift into your ears, images of people you’ve never seen before and will never see again. And yet your paths happened to cross.

You sit in a seat whose comfort is deceiving, another traveller an inch away from both of your arms. You got the armrest. You’re close enough to see the swell of their chest with every breath. Your finger glides over the seam of your wallet, tempted to buy overpriced items that you never otherwise would. Airports with waiting halls that require no necessity for distraction, no constant page flipping or social media scrolling. For once it becomes enough to sit and sip lukewarm coffee from a polystyrene cup, eyes flickering from side to side. Watching other lives being lived.

It’s electric.

Walls that have watched, toilet seats that have felt more than most. Every battered suitcase its own level of stuffed, wheels sliding over floors that have licked the sole of every shoe, halls that have heard the sincerest of goodbyes and the most heartfelt of hellos.

On your left, or right depending on the mood, light cascades through larger-than-life windows. Views of planes waiting to take off to destinations of which you may have never heard, places you might not ever get the chance to visit. Pilots that perform under the pressure of countless lives on their shoulders, air hostesses that purse their lips together in a failed effort to hide the pain of their uniforms digging into their chests.

Lean back in your fake leather chair and take a second. Just watch.

Watch the frequent flyers with their spotless suits and ties, the ones that can navigate through the airport with their eyes closed. Sometimes, early in the mornings, they do. Watch the picture perfect family ready for a holiday – sunhats already unique to the shapes of their heads. Watch the frantic duty free shoppers and the young, sun-kissed couples ready to conquer the world – together.

Together. Just for a while.

Before, within an hour or two, everyone will evaporate into their own separate directions. And the lives that lived around you will grow all the more vivid, all the more complex. As will yours.

Summer

Days seem so infinite sometimes,

Nights never end.

A summer stained with invincibility,

The entire world at the tips of your fingers,

You think you’ll be the one to change it.

When?

You’re naive to think that problems will dribble away

While you lie by the pool,

Tanning your back,

Then your front,

And then your back again-

Making things even,

Making things repetitive.

You longed for summer,

For freedom,

For opportunities to burn bright,

To have chances to do what you promised yourself you would,

Find time to chase all those dreams you dreamed.

Hours trickle by,

Countless left to make a difference,

But that funny little thing that they call

Time-

It runs out.

And before you know it,

Endless days ended,

And the nights that seemed as if they would never betray you did-

Pastel sunrises painting the skies once more.

Stop wasting time you think you have,

There’s never,

Ever,

As much of it as you think.

So find the bucket list stained with coffee cup rings,

Pick a place and start,

As if you never mean to stop.

Time exists tomorrow,

But it also exists today-

It exists right now. 

On your own

They say that all we need is somebody to lean on. But be sure that when that person pulls back, you’re still standing. On your own.

Stop relying on others to determine your worth. You don’t need their winks or smiles or compliments to convince you that you can make it for a little while longer.

Let your own words convince you, instead. Be your own hero.

Take this world into the palms of your hands and hold tighter than you ever have. Grip on to the mountains and let the desert sand slip through your fingers. Let the rivers run down your arms and breathe in the ocean air until your lungs are reminded of how much they like the taste of this little thing that people call life. It can be quite nice sometimes.

Beautiful, even.

As you hold this planet, try lifting it up over your head because, guess what? You’re strong enough. Even if you forgot to go to the gym last week and lied about it because you were too embarrassed to admit that you mess up sometimes. Swallow the guilt, because we all do. And whenever you need a second chance, or a third, or a fourth, don’t wait for others to give it to you. Give it to yourself.

So I know this life might not look so beautiful right now, and I know that the stars might not sparkle quite as bright as you wished for them to, but you are still you. You’re the same skin and the same bones and the same birthmarks, dimples, and freckles. And your smile is as bright as it has ever been. The soles of your feet can carry you anywhere, climb to the highest peaks and the lowest levels, take you places you’ve always longed to go but never imagined that you could. Not on your own.

Because all those compliments you thrive off of, they mean nothing unless you let them, unless you listen.

So let the sun peel your eyes open in the early mornings. Switch your phone off for the day. Disconnect. Take yourself to a hidden coffee shop and sink into the armchairs; let your worries drift away with the thick espresso smoke. Hear the chatter around you, but don’t listen. Concentrate on your own thoughts instead. They’re more powerful. Go on a walk, lose yourself. Alone. At night. Paint constellations across the skies and let them guide you for a while. Clear your mind to make room for new plans, new goals, dreams that you’ve never felt you deserved to have. But you do.

And you always did.

Unspoken

It was 4:12pm when I got the phone call. The nurse’s voice was heavy, but unwrinkled, as if she knew everything that she had to say and didn’t question how best to say it because she’d done it that many times. And if there was ever a contest, if a sick-minded madman ever decided to organise a contest for the best bad news giver, I think that nurse might just get the gold.

But, it wouldn’t be a fair victory. Because see, there is no “best” way to tell someone that their brother was in a car accident, no matter how many apologies you weave into the words. There is no winning way to talk about someone’s life slipping through their own fingers – lost. 

Forever.  

As her voice faded, I lay down and kept every one of my numb limbs as still as possible. I pretended that if I didn’t move, time wouldn’t either. And I wouldn’t have to face the fact that I never told my brother how proud I was of him, of the person he’d become. Not because of his basketball career or his fancy car I couldn’t even pronounce the name of, but because of him. His selflessness, his charm. His determination to be the best possible version of himself, and the way he inspired me to do the same. He never knew, and he’d never know.  

Say what you want to say because, before you even realise, it will be too late. You’ll be laying your left cheek on a damp pillow and you’ll wish on every silver star for another chance. And you might think you’re safe because good things deserve to happen to good people, but this world doesn’t always work out that way. Time, it runs out. Fast.

So speak. 

Tell the girl with the thick rimmed glasses and a nose dotted with freckles that she is everything you’ve ever desired and watch her cheeks crimson at the words. Say thank you to the bus driver, and to the shopkeeper, and to your high school history teacher. Save a thank you for your mother for not only bringing you into this world, but teaching you how to live in it because, I’m pretty sure that without her, you wouldn’t have a clue how. Swallow the self-pride and stretch your tongue to tell the teenage boy in line behind you at the supermarket that the twinkle in his emerald eyes is breathtaking because, after the day he’d had, such a compliment would help to swerve the knife away from his wrist. Words can save people, you know.

If they’re spoken.

Don’t wait. Don’t wait until it is a second away from being too late; don’t wait for snow white hospital sheets and tear stained funeral parlours. Don’t wait for the nurse’s phone call. Don’t wait for the air to thicken as the world tilts a little to the left and then a little to the right and your head feels like it’s about to explode with all those words you left unsaid. Say them. 

"Do you eat?"

Once upon a time, “skinny” was a compliment. It was a word I longed to be directed towards me, one that lit the spark of self-worth inside of my exhausted body, as if “skinny” was synonymous with “worthy”. “Skinny” would tell me I’d made it, “skinny” would be the pat on the back, the hi-five, the certificate I’d always wished I could deserve.  

Not anymore.

“You’ve gotten so skinny,” they say – a dangerous fire burning through their eyes, a gaze sharp enough to scratch my bones. And as they purse their lips together, I can hear the words they’re holding in. She must be anorexic, the voices echo through my ears. She’ll probably throw up that sandwich she’s eating. Their words, or lack of them, are needles piercing through my suddenly too transparent skin. They wait for a while and, with a condescending laugh, ask “do you eat?”

“I do a lot of exercise,” I open my mouth but the words seem worthless. Just like me. Their bitter judgements are heavy metal music, deafening the ringing of my alarm clock at 7am on a Sunday when any normal teenager drowns in a swirl of sheets and dreams and I am tying up my running shoes because I want to have a reason to be proud of myself. Their eyes are blind to the platefuls of vegetables, the carrots I learnt to roast and boil, the ingredients I go out and buy to avoid my mother’s idea of a Wednesday night meal: McDonald’s. Their superficial smiles are shadowed with the assumption that starving yourself is the sole option when the thought had never even crossed my mind.

Not for a second.

And the brisk morning runs and the grass green smoothies and the extra push up when my arms felt about ready to snap seemed to vanish into air that hung heavy - tainted, just like the handful of pride I’d worked so hard to save. Because the come on, believe in yourself doesn’t mean quite so much when no one else believes in you.

“Skinny” used to feel like it would be a compliment. Once upon a time. 

High hopes

I guess I expected more. I guess I waited for something out of this world, a lightning bolt to shoot through me and knock me off my feet, dance through the rain that licked our lips, the thunder that echoed through our bodies, quickened the rhythm of our hearts. And in that, I guess I asked for disappointment to blur my vision, to slow the beating of my heart until I had to press a finger to my wrist to check if there was even still a pulse. I don’t think I would have minded if there wasn’t.

Because that’s what I do – I let my hopes fly high, let them soar, wishing that they’ll stroke the moon and land somewhere amongst the stars. So that when they fall, they tumble, rocket down and crash to the ground like the pile of bricks I’ve been trying to build over and over and over again. But I guess some things just aren’t meant to stand.

I thought we would be the two that made it. I thought we would let the flames lick our toes but never rise higher than the ankles. I thought we would let the ocean waves kiss our lips but our heads would always stay above water. We would float. Or, so I thought. I thought that our hands were magnets and you seemed to pull me closer and closer until the day we both became positive, or maybe it was negative, and we just didn’t attract anymore. Our hearts beat, but not for each other, not like they used to.

We were the ones that burnt in the fire, let the tug of the tide pull us further and further away until it felt like we were on opposite sides of the universe and nothing would ever be strong enough to push us back together again. Not you. Not me.

And my hopes hovered above us, taunting, teasing. We never got there, not to the moon or the stars. Not even close.