No One Ever Tells You

No One Ever Tells You

In those first instants, when you sway, balanced on the edge of something wondrous, your body, long before the mind, begins to fall.  The promise of potential, a surge of intimate electricity, like tinder to your cheeks.  Banter and half-make-believe flirtations draw you back across the room, until you find a flickering.  That unspooling of emotion, the ricochet of hope after so many unasked prayers.  February—so brutal in her shortness—no time for proper grieving.  But in those first moments, an urge, an aching, to cast off the black of betrayal, and crumble.  Slip smiling from the tightrope, wound tight as barbed wire round your heart, into the ocean.  Into a future so soon conceived.  From a neon haze, you drift through the hours after, glowing.  Until the coast is yours, cupped in shaky hands.  And the horizon—endless—represents how far you’ve flown.

But no one ever warns you. 

You fell hard, fast from a broken ledge. 

Toppled into loving; tumbled into happiness.

But no one ever tells you how easy it is to break.  

In the dusky hours, when memories surface with the sunset, things begin to fall.  Secrets shared too soon, sad songs played in secret.  Boxes, half-unpacked, wallow with hungry mouths, while silence feeds your fears.  The past has a way of staying with you, woven messily into your shadow.  You want so fiercely, you move ferociously.  A dance of desperation, you clutch at the new pieces.  The wild sorrow in your eyes sending signals unreadable.  The ground grows closer and you plummet quicker, clutching at tomorrow.

It’s a long way down.

But no one needs to warn you.

No one needs to tell you what you stand to lose.

You already know.

And in the melting summer morning, you break the fall.  Find your footing and clamber back into today.  Your worries swept up into the west coast wind, the days of winter splintered in the waves.  Now there are sleepy Sundays, sweet embraces, and endless possibilities.  There are your dreams and the dreams you twist together.  You crave and cherish equally, caught up—tangled up—wonderfully in what you could’ve lost.

No, no one ever tells you.

Sometimes you have to fall.

I wrote this the other day after listening to the music I recommended on the blog yesterday. Melanie Penn has a song called "Before a Fall," and there's a line where she says, "Nobody tells you everything you stand to lose before the fall." Those words took my breath away and immediately inspired me. They made me think about how suddenly, how ferociously, we sometimes fall in love. We are struck by the possibilities and by the wondrous potential of a new relationship; oblivious to the pain and difficulty that awaits us should things go wrong. Every relationship has it's ups and downs, every relationship has falls both good and bad. Having recently fallen into something incredible, I know the way it feels to fall in love and also the way it feels when fear and worry trip you up. But if you're lucky, sometimes someone is there to catch you.  Sometimes you have to catch yourself and find a way to stand back up. But a fall is always the beginning of something...and sometimes it's the best thing that can happen to you.