It is hard to reconcile two such radically, contrasting sides.
On one side there is the evident lack of trust, be it for anything relating to human contact or happiness that comes from anywhere but from her own actions. She can trust a day to herself; that is the kind of happiness that she makes and it as guaranteed as the sun coming up tomorrow. When other people promise a good time, however, that is when her suspicion kicks in and automatically she starts thinking about the day she could have had if she had just stayed by herself. And that is just a sampling to give you an idea of how much she distrusts the larger motions that one person can make to another- "I will never hurt you." "You can trust me." "I would never do you like he did." "I will not let you down." "You can open up and talk to me." "I promise."
Obviously, if there is such sudden and complete weariness over someone saying that something they could do for a few hours would be fun, you can imagine what hearing any of the above does to her thoughts and emotion-centers.
So on the one hand we have such a rigid and utter distrust of all things coming from other people, unless they are promising to make her life a living hell, promise they will betray any and all confidences, and generally waste every precious minute she gives to them.
But if people were that honest, there would not be so many people like her, now would there?
But on the other hand we have moments like today.
It was brisk, chilly as only a "warm winter day" can be after a few days of nothing but freezing cold and snow. She hates the cold but today was lovely. The sun was out and everything was bright and clear; there is something about winter sunlight that looks nothing like summer sunlight. It made all the colors pop- the azure of the sky, the vibrancy of what green is left, the clean white of the clouds. It was as if the Powers That Be was trying to make up for the craptastic weather the people in her area had this past week by showing anyone who wished to look that winter could be just as lovely as it could be hellish.
She had gotten up early (for her) on a day off from work and done a little cleaning of the apartment; she had promised herself as much time online as possible, writing being her main hope, but before that she wanted to get the apartment in order. She did and decided to take out the garbage, get a little air; there's something about taking out the trash that just says to our little crazie that the apartment is all clean and ready for anything. In other words, her OCD will leave her alone enough to write.
On her way down to the dumpster she passed a silverish car with an Arkansas license plate. It was parked right near the stairs so that it would be the first thing she saw when she rounded them to head for the dumpster. The sight of it took her breath away.
By now one would think that she would be used to seeing his car. Used to seeing any evidence that he exists anywhere but just in her imagination, another glorious character she created but as distant to her as the beautiful clouds we touched upon earlier.
But, no. The sight of anything relating to this person still makes a pain deep in her stomach and heart, a pang she can not ever hope to be able to put into words or get used to. Seeing anything that reminds her of him makes her eyes hurt, too; not an apt description of how she feels but the closest she can come to describing something that refuses to be put into words. They used to talk to one another about the butterflies in their stomachs and for her those butterflies are alive and well even after all this time. They have razors for wings.
And as time passes, they just get stronger.
She had to go see him, just for a moment; he lives in the same building as she does and all she has to do to see him now is go and knock on his door. Or, as is more befitting of her character, she knocks once if he is lucky and just barges on in, cheerfully letting him know that one day he will take away the copy of his key that he gave her. She is only half joking when she says this. There is a part of her that believes it.
He always looks slightly confused when she shows up out of nowhere like that; a little hesitation in his eyes and a bright and ready smile but a little worry at the corners, as if he is trying to figure out what is wrong without just coming out and saying it.
Not without good reason; as quickly as she comes she is already ready to go and though she tells him she cares she knows this short burst of emotion from her does not convey what it is she is really trying to say.
You see, she fell in love. Hard. Despite herself.
Love is not black and white even in the best of times; at least, not for people like our girl. For people like her, love is complicated, a painful but sweet sensation that they spend just as much time embracing as they do running from it.
And she can run with the best of them.
Maybe not in a physical way; she will be the first to loudly and clearly state that she hates to run. Her place is at a computer or with a notebook and a pen, not sprinting any marathons. But in the emotional sense she has yet to meet anyone who can even keep up with her dust when it comes to removing herself from an emotional situation she finds detestable. It has become an art how she can distance herself from something that she finds to be no longer worth her time or energy or from something that hurts; she has been doing it for so long and does it so well that like anything else one does well, she has had to pay for it. And running and being on the run is exhausting. Whether you are running from something or to something, there is a level of wariness that only a hard run can bring down on a person. It weighs heavily on one. There are all different kinds of gravity and none of them are good.
Being the kind that has such trust issues, love does not come easy. There have only been two times in her entire life where she has given her complete and utter trust and love with no strings attached, easily and freely and without pain, regret, burden or fear. One of those she has given her heart to now lies curled up in a tight little fluff-ball in her favorite napping place as of the moment and mood and never once has she ever been sorry that she was blessed enough to have found her lovable little companion.
That kind of love has no boundaries, it asks for nothing in return but the recipient's happiness. The older she gets the more attached to that little cat she has become and there are plenty of good reasons, the least of which being pure greed.
Kitties, after all, are nothing but love.
Humans, on the other hand, seem to have it in their DNA to crab-bucket all the joy out of the world. She is not without her faults in that regard, either. She is not an easy person to get along with. Just ask the few people around her that she will call friends. Putting it lightly, she is an a**, she has her glaring faults, and she has a single-minded desire coupled with having known for as long as she can remember what she wants to be, where she wants to be, and how she wants to get there. Those two things are a potent mixture added with all her other personality traits, making a rather obnoxious human being that thinks she knows everything just because she has always had her eyes wide open.
I repeat: She is not an easy person to get along with.
She is a loner. She recognizes in herself some of the worst and best of her sign, which was the reason she originally became so fascinated with comparing people to their astrological sign to begin with. Arrogant? Yes, she is. Independent? Yes, proudly. Natural loner? You bet, and with good reason since she is so damned hard to get along with. She loves to tell anyone who will listen that she is "All Aries" because that is her cute way of warning people of the fact she is a butthead.
The only redeeming qualities she believes she has includes something that the owner of the car with the Arkansas tag pointed out to her one time.
"At least you are aware of when you are wrong and can admit it. You know what your flaws are and try to work on them. You are actually aware of what is wrong with you, instead of blaming other people and never admitting you've done something wrong."
She is.
She is very, very aware. Such self-awareness has made her even creakier emotionally then she already was; I guess another price to pay for doing something well. She is a very high self-monitor. She notices all the wrong, all the flaws, wants complete and utter perfection in everything that she does or says or has anything to do with while at the same time knowing that kind of perfection is impossible. Therefore she punishes herself relentlessly for not being how she believes she should be. There are few and fair-between moments of peace of mind with this person; despite wanting to be so good for the people she cares about she only seems capable of giving and being good up until a point, letting people down when they depend on her the most. Our girl is a paradox when it comes to other people. A self-aware paradox that keeps a rather calm and detached manner for the outside world. Admitting anything else would be weakness of character, and she can not stand being weak.
If she does anything good or right she will always think it was by accident. She does try- oh, how she does try- but in her mind she has paved a million yellow brick roads with her good intentions and before she is done with this life she will pave a million and one more. She wants to do good, wants to be good, but with such awareness of all the flaws it is hard to see even the remotest possibilities of being that way.
So with that knowledge it makes it even harder to understand why someone with such a capacity for sweetness, emotion and such an honest want of love and companionship would seek out someone like her.
It seems like a cruel joke, that someone with such a tender heart would willingly choose someone like her.
She told him once that she was the Tinwoman and he was her heart. He laughed and she is not very sure he understood how very honest she was with that line.
He is also her home, her courage, and her wisdom.
She did not set out for all these things from a person, you see. But such are the best things in life- you get them when you very least expect it.
Like a soft knock on the door on a cold December night.
Fire and ice. White and black. Darkness and light.
I could go on and on and on.
An introverted bookworm who has spent her entire life wanting a home of her own with a kitty to share it with and the chance to be a writer falls in love with an extroverted but sweet goof who loves to clown around with his friends and has so many interests that it seems it is hard for him to focus on what he wants in life. When they met his heart was on his sleeve and hers was a dead garden.
That was a few years ago.
Now.
So much has changed and yet so many things have come full-circle that it is actually bothersome to the cranky but well-meaning introvert. She does not deal with these kinds of things very well; books and stories and characters and plots are her lifeblood, you see. If this was one of her stories, it would end perfectly, though it would have its moments where it would seem as if all was lost. All wonderful stories have those moments. It is what makes the happy ending worth it.
But this is not one of her stories. And she is very aware of this. And being so aware has its curses and drawbacks, just as we discussed earlier. If she messes up there will not be a rewrite, there will be no deleting or crossing out lines to reform the scene. Life is not a rough-draft but it is a work-in-progress; only after will the full truth be known. What a wonderful idea to the introvert- something about that is soothing to her; there are no mistakes, she was once told, only new beginnings. Chances. What a novel faith; it makes her feel hope that in the end it will all come out balanced despite all her goofs and set-backs.
So with that in mind she is heavily weighing every option she has right now, every choice and action and deed because she has a chance with this person to do more then she ever thought possible; she has two wonderful friends who she loves deeply and dearly and has so much hope for, no matter the outcome.
But with such great chances, she is very aware, comes the chance of disaster. Things might just fall apart, and fall apart badly. In her mind there will not be a gentle unraveling of events, but a brutal and painful ending of everything around her. All the good and the happy things she has been shielding and keeping safe from the world might be taken away from her; she is keenly aware of how everything she holds dear can be taken away from her, without warning and so suddenly that she might never recover from it. She is capable of such love but she has tasted great pain before and has hardly gotten her breath back from the single hardest hit she has ever taken. She knows there is just more of the same kind of pain ahead; worse, she knows there is no stopping what will one day come to pass.
There is such pain and hurt when one is so aware of something that can not be helped; it does no good to be told that all that happens is part of the great cycle of things- what is born must one day die, what one gets is what one must give, what one reaps is what one must sow...Still. She knows that ignorance is bliss because she remembers once having such bliss.
But she has also tasted how great it can be, if she will just allow it.
She has gotten just a glimpse of all the things that can be...and it is not in her nature to let a chance pass her by. For all the reservation and the serenity she is capable of displaying to others there is also a willingness to charge ahead and embrace happiness and joy and hope.
She only sits for so long, after all. It is in her nature to run; there is such brightness ahead and she can see it...oh, how she longs to run for it.
Despite herself, despite all she fears, she will run for it.
And she is going to take him with her.
She is scared as all hell but who wouldn't be? She guesses he might be afraid, too, and that eases the fear somewhat. She is torn between fighting the terror that comes over her when she thinks of what great damage he can wreak upon her life and her fragile garden (what he helped to create he can also help destroy, after all) and throwing all caution to the wind and allowing herself to continue to fall for him, head over heels until she either crashes or they enter the next chapter, be that whatever it will be.
She does love a good dare, after all; she loves a challenge as she loves a good story and he seems to be both. Bless her heart, but the girl does love a challenge. It has been her downfall many a time; only time will tell if this is another time where that trait will land her in hot water.
We leave our introvert and our extrovert until the next time, and the next adventure, and we wish them well. They will have their problems, all couples do, but they have also had their moments and I trust they will have many more. He loves a challenge, also; thus why he is with her, she supposes. If ever there was a challenge set before him this haughty creature who resents the very thing she wants is one.
I wish him luck.
I wish them both all the luck in the world.
