I Love Bad Timing
Posted: Sunday, January 02, 2011
by Sara O'Rourke
My clock reads 23:59. I had been asleep a couple of hours ago, for a little while, then been woken by the sudden need to make a phonecall I had forgotten about in my drowsy state, and now I sit here, upright in bed, not able to shut off my mind. I feel the sudden compulsion to write my thoughts down, and it is these exactly which will form the essence of what follows. In this 00:01 delirium, I don't promise coherence or sense.
Specifically, I am probably feeling this way as I am on the brink of moving to the -literal- other side of the world for almost a year, and, while ordinarily I would not be able to skip a heartbeat I'd be so excited, this time around, well, it seems I happen to have started falling in love. Crap, basically.
No number of epic love stories - of lovers being thousands of miles apart or separated by wars, disease or fighting families - is going to encourage the thought that what I have right now is at all feasible for me to continue over the process of the next however long. Australia is 10 hours time difference from the UK. This means we'd have to schedule each other in - how romantic! More than this, I am going to be experiencing so many new things and really need to concentrate on putting my whole into that. And, as if that wasn't enough, I know myself, and him, quite well... at least, I think I do... and neither of us are the kind of people to spend our time being lonely. So, logically, this is an inpractical idea and should not be attempted at any cost.
Of course, there is this whole thing, that big elephant in the room, what they call 'love' itself, which is itching under my clothes a little bit. Could something really last that long when it's not physically present and when lust is walking around all the time to tease you away? Does the mind and the heart really hold on to something with continued strength and passion, when there is nothing to continually remind it of its worth?
In the run up, or rather, more appropriately, the run down, to my departure - 3 weeks to date - I feel the words at the tip of my tongue and yet I don't believe they will be said. Ignorance, whether felt or true, is still bliss, and I figure as long as I don't say or hear the word 'love' mentioned, I will be suitably able to get on that plane and have a fabulous time. I may feel it in my shortness of breath, in the butterflies that whirl around my stomach every time I kiss him, but the real test, I guess, I deem, will be to see if those words remain perched there behind my teeth until the day I step back off the plane into the UK arrivals, and blurt them everywhere. It will be like holding my breath for the next nine months, under the weight of the oceans that separate us.
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Top-level comments on this article: (3 total)A salve or ointment will greatly assist("what they call 'love' itself, which is itching under my clothes a little bit. ")
Like with jobs, lovers, in multitudes, must be endured and tried before one knows what to settle in to.
Paul
I have been living far away from my girlfriend and our work priorities separate us along with the differences in time zone. It's been exactly a year since I saw her last and we were both in tears of separation at the Mumbai airport. I was supposed to see her on November 8th 2010, I couldn't get my passport issued in time, supposed to see her on 28th of January, I still don't have my passport. Is this a test of love and commitment from the universe? Definitely seems like it. Thank you for reminding me my commitment.
DM
Excellent article! Loved your lines "I do think life has a funny way of timing things very badly sometimes. I sometimes picture it, life, an old woman on a rocking chair, giggling away at her troublemaking, knowing that she has mingled people, events and feelings together in such a way as to cause a bit of a havoc, and all she has to do is sit back and watch it all froth and bubble."
I've never been able to predict love or try to understand it. I read in a book, the title escapes me, that suggests to experience love while its there and don't look back if it ends.
Thank you for that last line.
I am investing all my energy into being positive and living for the moment, as hard as it is to switch off my mind. All it wants to remind me is, 'you're leaving, you're leaving, this is not going to last.'
I wish it would just leave me alone and let me be happy.
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