““It wasn’t necessarily love at first sight, but when I saw him look back at me it was something. And right then in that moment of time, I was nowhere other than right there, and how beautiful it was I got to experience that present moment.””
“I haven’t made the time to write” is how I start this because I told this to a man I know, on a bench once, in Manly, Australia. I told him I dislike when people say “I don’t have time,” because really that is the only thing we all have. I told him that I wish more people would say “I didn’t make time,” or “I will make the time.” It validates the fact that we are both aware we have time, and with this precious time that we have, we either use it for one thing or we use it for another.
What we make time for shows us what we truly value, what we love. And so I sit here now and I won’t lie to you and say that I haven’t had the time to write, but rather I have had so much time, and used it to do other things.
Before I tell you about all of those things I have done, I would like to tell you that I do love to write. I do love the way my thoughts come from the Lily in my head and heart (which are usually one and the same for me), out onto a physical piece of something- paper, screen, note, card, love letter.
It amazes me along with- how wind begins, how we are spinning so fast around in space and yet stay stuck to the earth, how we drink invisible liquid everyday or we will die, and how we must all close our eyes at night in order to dream and wake up the next morning- how these thoughts I have that only exist within myself (sometimes that I don’t even know are there), can travel down through my chest, past my heart, through my veins, to the tips of my fingers, and out into this world. For you to read.
I want to tell you that I love to write. I love these little words that teach me about myself. When I began writing just three hundred and fifty words ago I knew that I wanted to write to you about the love I feel coursing through the entirety of my soul, but I didn’t expect to begin with time. And so here we are. I am here and you are there.
It is 4:51 in the afternoon as I sit in the Shanghai airport with my phone plugged in to charge and while it does so, my OCD denies me the ability to use it until it reaches one hundred percent. And so I write.
And it is 10:52 in the morning in Geneva, Switzerland where someone that I love sits at their desk and writes their thoughts onto a page as well.
It is 4:53 in the morning where someone else that I love is sleeping and will wake up soon to comfort me in my brief moment of sadness as I think about this person who has the time 10:52.
It is 6:54 in the evening in Manly, Australia where the friendships I have created the last eight months await to welcome me back from the three weeks of time I haven’t been there.
It is 1:55 in the morning in Monterey Park, California where someone else I love rests their one hundred and three year old eyes and at any time could quite possibly not open them again to feel that mysterious wind moving.
It is 10:56 in the night of yesterday on the small island of Kailua Kona, Hawaii two thousand five hundred miles in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where someone else I love is about to fall asleep.
Time. We all have it. We are all somewhere. At the same moment, just a different time.
I have just traveled eleven hours on a plane from London Heathrow airport where I sat for five hours having previously flown one hour and forty five minutes. And before that I was on a plane that departed from Geneva, Switzerland.
I hugged someone goodbye at 2:14pm and the first tears fell down my little face at 2:56. They waited patiently as I watched someone I love walk away. They stayed strongly in place in the depths of the inner corners of my green eyes as I watched that person descend on the escalator and disappear. My tears waited at bay like a ferry idling in a harbor waiting for the one in front of it to leave so it can dock. They swayed gently like the waves underneath the ferry, but knew they weren’t at the shore yet. The tears moved around my eyes like a plane arriving at the airport bridge rearranging countless times to safely attach to the airport. And when I was finally through security, with the option to continue one foot in front of the other toward gate C58 or to turn around and run through the exit doors, they flooded my face.
They rushed down my cheeks like the water of the Lac de Moiry I saw last Sunday at 9:08 in the morning. Whatever constructed the walls of Lac de Moiry created them with much more strength than the creators of my eyes. Should the walls of that colossal dam ever collapse, it would still only represent a fraction of the water that came rushing out of my body as I imagined taking my seven kilo purse into my arms and lifting my roller case into my other hand.
I would conquer the escalator stairs two leaps at a time down to the ground level. Not even putting my bags down, I would run to the elevator and press the down button over and over again, well knowing it wouldn’t make it arrive faster, but needing something to beat faster than my heart. Hoping to calm it.
I would press -6 and bounce my leg faster than the bolts of lightening I saw crash down Monday night in Vecorin, Switzerland at 1:42 in the morning. The doors of the elevator would be pushed open by my own strength, harder and more powerful than any little kid that had tried before.
When I turn the corner and see the car’s reverse lights illuminate I would drop my bags right there in the middle of the driveway and I would run faster than I did that Wednesday morning at 10:29am in Chalais, Switzerland.
They would see me in the reverse camera and return the car to park. The driver door would open and they would jump out. The door would stay open behind them, the music still playing, the car lights still shining. And I would hold them. I would tell them I don’t want to leave. I would tell them that I have found my home. I would hold them and I would not let go.
But I didn’t run through the exit doors and chase the person that I love. I put one foot in front of the other and walked to my gate. It felt like the largest betrayal of my heart that I have ever done. I felt my chest tighten around itself, my ribs ceased to expand outward and continued to contract inward. Until the only thing I could feel was the breaking of my heart.
They say you have to keep breaking your heart until it opens and I will tell you that by three in the afternoon sitting at gate C58 in the airport of Geneva, my heart was cracked open.
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It wasn’t good weather the day we met. “There is no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing” is the quote I would tell him the next week. So I guess to tell you that it wasn’t ‘good’ weather that day would be to go against my own positive way of thinking. Rather instead I will correct myself and tell you that the weather wasn’t of the best conditions for me to stay at the beach and so I spent my first day off work in a very long time at my place of work. I work at a recovery center that has saunas and cold plunges, compression boots, and a hyperbaric chamber. Because I didn’t put on suitable clothing that day, it only made sense that the clothing I was wearing more suited a sauna.
I had already relaxed for twenty minutes in what we call the “Freshwater Sauna” and I didn’t cold plunge in between because I read that it’s not good for women who are of child-bearing age. I don’t mean to say that I want a child tomorrow or the day after that, but I do know for certain- the one thing I know for certain- is that I will have a little Lily one day, that I want one. And so I didn’t cold plunge.
I wrapped my towel around myself and sat at the front desk with my co-workers gossiping about meaningless nights from the previous week and experiences that added no real value to the life I want to create. We laughed, and it was fun, I am young, and it is okay.
But if you were to tell me that at 7:30pm that Monday in Manly, Australia a tall man from Geneva, Switzerland would walk through the doors of a tiny sauna on Belgrave street- I would call you crazy. Furthermore, if you were to tell me that this tall man from across the world would be life changing, I would call you crazy again. That my life would cease to have anything meaningless from that day on, that only experiences of value would begin to arrive- I would call you crazy, but I would believe you.
I saw him walk through the door with two other men and the three of them together were striking. All were tall, all had muscles, all were handsome, but it was the way the one on the right walked with a calmness in his stride that caught my attention. The others approached first and were more outward. I looked down when they reached the desk and all I heard was the sound of his voice say his last name. The man on the right waited patiently behind his friends and was the last to walk into the sauna.
“Did you seem them?!” Said my coworker. “You have to go back into the sauna!”
“If I go back into the sauna right now I will pass out.”
“That is your man. Go.”
And while yes I called her crazy, a part of me believed her.
It wasn’t the part of me that saw him, it wasn’t the part of me that heard him, it wasn’t even the fun, young, part of me that thought “What do I have to lose?” It was a different part of me, deep down, that almost thought too much nothing for it to mean anything, and that’s why I went into the sauna. I didn’t join them expecting anything, I barely caught a glimpse of him when he walked in. I didn’t go in on a mission, I didn’t go in to make someone fall in love, to start a conversation, nor to get anything out of the interaction really. I simply decided that every choice I make in life brings me somewhere, and that day I had no where to be, and so I went.
I think the universe rewards people who have no expectations in life. I don’t mean people who lack motivation or goals. I mean the people who put their trust in them. The people who don’t expect anything from anyone other than what the other wants to give, to be, to say. When someone decides to be, instead of to do, the universe rewards you with little glimpses of guidance. From there you are gifted the most extraordinary book of life that is filled with events you couldn’t even have imagined, because you didn’t, you just let it. Let them.
And so that day when I joined the three men in the sauna and sat on the bottom bench between a woman’s feet because it was already full, I looked across to my right and saw him sitting there on the bottom bench himself, and I felt something.
I didn’t know what it was, I still can’t tell you. Imagine that, a writer at a loss for words. It wasn’t necessarily love at first sight, but when I saw him look back at me it was something. And right then in that moment of time, I was nowhere other than right there, and how beautiful it was I got to experience that present moment.
I would go on to experience many presents with him. This day changed the path I was on so drastically, so suddenly, so beautifully, that to look back on that day- life before him feels more of a hazy dream and after him- it all became so clear. Home is not a place, but a feeling.
Two days later at 5:45pm he left the sauna once more and before disappearing he turned around for one last look. I saw him through the glass of the window gaze back at me and it felt as though he recognized me from a hundred years before. I slowly lifted my hand to wave but it didn’t move back and forth, it just stayed still, and it became clear to me that I was waving goodbye to what looked like the rest of my life.
At the beginning of this writing, I told you I was going to tell you why I didn’t make time for writing. I was going to tell you all about those presents that I had with him and how I didn't have time to write because I was busy living.
I was going to tell you about how he kissed my forehead on Easter and I felt safe for the first time in a long time.
I was going to tell you about the the 23rd of April when we went swimming after yoga and I watched the waves crash against his chest as he faced the horizon. He turned around to see me looking at him and asked me “Quoi?” And I was going to tell you that I wanted to tell him right then that I loved him.
I was going to tell you about how I booked a flight to Switzerland ten days after meeting him around 8:30pm on a Thursday and I was going to tell you that I went.
That we waited two months since meeting to fully discover each other and I would tell you that anyone who waits two months to touch your body will have touched your soul long before. And if you were to tell me I am crazy I would tell you “I know.”
At the beginning of this writing I was going to tell you all about the time him and I had together, but as I find myself sitting here at 7:17pm on the fourth of July in Shanghai, replaying all of our souvenirs, they find themselves running through my heart, down my veins, and stopping at my fingers.
These times don’t want to leave me. These times want to stay forever right where they are, here inside me, and so that's where they will live.
The entire point of life is to take chances on dreams that seem crazy to most but feel like destiny to you. I can tell you that since the 14th of April I have been taking chances on a dream that feels like destiny.
“Le destin fait bien les choses,” and this is only the beginning. Time, it will come to us.