Golden Brown Honey

My biggest fear in life is water.

Well, not water in general, but deep water. Water so deep that I could die in it. I don’t know how to swim so that is a big reason why I fear the water so much. I get mini anxiety attacks at the thought or sight of being underwater. I guess deep down inside I am afraid of drowning. If you want to dig deeper than that, you can say I am afraid of death. Who isn’t?

My cousin’s wedding was pretty amazing. On January 9, 2010, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, I had the honor of being one of the bridesmaids. My cousin got her college degree in Marine Biology and was, or is, in love with the ocean. Naturally, their wedding vows took place in front of the Sea Kelp Forest, which is a huge aquarium. Yes, an aquarium. Filled with water and fish and things. Talk about loving someone so much that you are willing to face your fears. Yikes.

The rehearsal was not that bad. It went by so quick and I thought to myself that it would be just as quick during the real ceremony. Wrong. After standing for about 10 or 15 minutes, the glass from the aquarium started to breathe. I’m serious. It was breathing. Or maybe I was starting to breathe heavy and my vision got cloudy and it looked like the glass was breathing with me. I could see the glass exhaling and inhaling, like a person’s chest. My hands started to sweat. My knees got weak. I made myself look away from the aquarium and I saw my other cousin, who was one of the groomsmen, standing across me. He could tell that something was wrong with me because he looked concerned and had that, “What’s the matter?” look on his face. I just shook my head and exhaled deeply.

I looked into the crowd and saw a pair of hands waving at me. I focused harder and saw that it was my cousin’s soon-to-be hubby’s parents, waving at me to come sit down. How could I possibly go sit down? Like right now? In the middle of the ceremony? Seriously? I took a few more breaths and finally gave in. I slowly walked towards them and sat down. I closed my eyes and started to breath slower. I heard someone whisper something in my ear and I opened my eyes. I could see the entire aquarium. The glass wasn’t breathing anymore. Everything was okay. We weren’t all going to die after all.

I remember the first time I drowned. It was absolutely beautiful.

I’m not trying to be dark or glorify death anything. I didn’t literally drown, like in water. I drowned in the golden brown honey of Omar’s eyes. His eyes are so amazingly beautiful to me. I don’t remember the conversation but I remember that he was talking about something very intensely. At first, I did my usual thing and watched his mouth as he talked. Then after a few seconds, I would glance at his eyes and look down at the table or at something behind him that was around his face so it looked like I was looking right at him. I can’t handle too much eye contact so I avoid it whenever i can. But suddenly I found myself looking into his eyes and for some reason I could not look away. He was gorgeous. He is gorgeous. I was suddenly aware that I needed to look away but I couldn’t. I was officially drowning. Drowning in 2 pools of golden brown honey.

It makes me laugh right now because all I could hear him saying was, “blah blah blah, blahblah blah blah.” I could hear my own voice in my head saying, “Oh my god, he is gorgeous. Look away! Stop staring!” I knew what was happening but I couldn’t stop staring at him. I kept shaking my head every now and then to let him know that I understood what he was talking about but in reality it was all still “blah blah blah.” I literally drowned in his eyes.

There is something powerful or magical about Omar’s eyes. I’m sure it has a lot to do with the fact that I am in love with him, but sometimes it really surprises me how just the mere thought of his eyes can calm me down. Whenever I get upset or sad about something, I tend to lose control of my thoughts and feelings. I start off by walking down a race track of self pity and then I pick up speed as I started to form my own answers and rationalizations. I start jogging. Then I start running. Before I know it, I am in an out of control sprint and I can’t stop. Sometimes it feels like I am going so fast that my feet don’t touch the ground.

Anger. Frustration. Confusion. Doubt. Everything just snowballs. Then water. I see ocean waves in my mind. I see waves crashing over me. The ocean water starts to change colors. It goes from blue green to honey. The ocean gets smaller and smaller until it turns into 2 drops of golden brown honey. They turn into Omar’s eyes. I slowly start to snap out of it. My feet return to Earth.

Omar’s eyes are like a remedy for my hardened heart. When I think of his beautiful eyes, my heart softens and I just want to reach out and hold him. I want to touch his face and kiss him. His eyes bring me peace, solace, and compassion. I will never be able to fully describe the effect his eyes have on me. I joke around about it to him, but he will never understand. Sometimes I don’t even understand it.

My favorite color is purple. But I would gladly and willingly drown in golden brown honey. And I am fearless when it happens.

Blah, blah, blah, blah blah…..

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The Hurt

After I left from the last time, I sat in my car and wondered if I was doing the right thing. I was going to drive off and leave him, for good. This was it. He had finally pushed me over the edge and I fell. I fell and it hurt so bad. I was crushed, drained, and left for dead. I texted him a final goodbye. And then I drove off.

I was crying but managed to drive home blindly. I parked my car and turned it off but I just sat there. I didn’t want to go inside because I didn’t know exactly how I looked and I didn’t want my parents to know that anything was wrong. I texted my daughter to see if she needed a ride home. There was some event at her high school that she and her boyfriend wanted to see. My phone rang and it was her. She asked if we could give her boyfriend a ride home and I said yes. Good. I needed more time to gather my thoughts.

I pulled up to the curb in front of my daughter’s high school auditorium and they both jumped into the car. I tried to keep up with their small talk but all that rang loud in my mind were the last two hours and all I could feel was this heavy, hurt feeling in my chest. It took so much of my strength to keep myself together but a few tears managed to make their way down my cheek. I figured it was too dark in the car for her to notice so I didn’t wipe them away, plus I thought that would look too obvious and give me away. I think I gave short, quick responses to her questions and comments about the event they had just seen. I really didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to curl up into a ball and fade away.

After we dropped off her boyfriend, we headed home in silence. I didn’t say a word. I had nothing to say. I started thinking about the very last time I actually seen Omar. It was the night before and he had fallen asleep while I was visiting him. I remember just looking at him and not wanting to leave but I knew I had to. I leaned over him and kissed his face. Oh, how I loved kissing that man. I wonder if he ever felt how much I adored him with every kiss. Each kiss held a feeling and message. I missed you. I want you. I adore you. I don’t want to live without you. I love you so very much. Every kiss…

When we finally got home, I went straight to my room. I changed into my pajamas, turned on the TV, and sat in my bed. Every where I looked, I saw him. The flower he gave me for Valentine’s Day was to my left. The empty package of cough drops was on my dresser. The dying flowers for my birthday were on the right. And every where else I looked was a vision of his face, his eyes. Oh, his eyes. I could even drown in his eyes by just thinking of them. I knew I still loved him, but right then and there, I was so hurt. I cried my pain out. I took a deep breath and let myself cry as hard as I could without being louder than my TV. With every exhale, I tried to push out the heavy, hurt feeling in my chest. I have no words to express how hurt I was. I was so hurt that I prayed to not love him anymore. I prayed for the strength to let him go. I prayed for me to get over him fast. I prayed to not worry about him and to not care about him. It hurt to love him.

Then I heard a familiar sound. It was my phone. I hesitated. It was a text message notification. For a pathetic moment, I thought it might be him, responding to my goodbye. But then I remembered how heartless he was and told myself that it wasn’t him at all. I grabbed my phone and read the message. I was right; it wasn’t him.

Are you okay, mom? It was my daughter.

No baba, I am so heartbroken </3. I cried more.

What happened? I didn’t know what to say. All I could do was cry.

I left Omar. I had to. I think my heart broke again as I sent the message.

Did he do something to you?

Just broke my heart and crushed my feelings. Then silence.

I don’t know how long I sat there crying. I kept telling myself that everyone says that you’ll feel better when you cry it out. But I still felt as hurt as I did when I sitting on the floor in front of his bedroom door. The hurt wasn’t going away and I wasn’t feeling any better. Please God, help me. Let me let him go. Don’t let me look back. Please. How many times can a person die in one night? I swear, it felt like my heart was made of mercury. Every time it shattered, it would come back together, and then break all over again. I kept waiting for it to be over. I wanted to hurry up and feel better already. But I couldn’t stop crying.

Then my door opened. It caught me by surprise because I thought I had locked my door. My daughter came in. I stared at the TV. She put her things on the corner of my bed and then climbed over to sit next to me. Then she leaned over and held me. She held me and whispered that everything was going to be alright. I held her and I couldn’t stop crying. I nodded my head to let her know that I heard her. And then she cried with me. She just held me and cried with me. She had done it once before and I swore that it wouldn’t happen again, yet here we were. Now my heart was breaking for her, for her seeing me this way. I took a deep breath and let her go. I told her I was going to be okay by the morning. I looked at her stuff and saw that she was getting ready to take a shower. I told her to go ahead and take a shower and that I would be alright. She let me go and looked at me. She wiped away a tear and then I started wiping my whole face. I reassured her again that I would be okay and told her to go shower. She slowly got up and gathered her things and left my room.

I cried most of that night. I felt lost and unsure and scared. And somewhere in the mix of all my emotions, I actually missed him. I was angry at myself for missing him. Why would you miss someone who just hurt you? I cried and told myself that someday I wouldn’t miss him anymore. Someday, I will stop thinking about him. Someday, I will stop caring about him. Someday, I will wonder why I loved him so much.

Someday.

 

The Plan

One of the best feelings in the world, at least to me, is the loving rush in the beginning of a relationship. Everything is new and you never know what you’re going to feel from one day to the next or one hour to the next. The butterflies are real and you feel them every time you anticipate a phone call or plan the next time you get to see each other. Every thing about the other person is perfect and sometimes even you feel like you could be perfect. And when the other person is not with you, you feel the realest and sincerest form of missing someone. Just the mere thought of that person or getting the opportunity to talk about that person makes you smile and fills your heart with joy and warm fuzzy things. And it’s weird because when you know it is getting close to having to say goodbye on the phone or in person, you feel a slight wave of sadness and you miss that person already, even though you are still on the phone or still in their presence.

I remember when Omar and I first started dating and that loving rush was in full swing. We lived about 30 minutes away from each other so I cherished every opportunity that we could be together. There were a few occasions of talking on the phone all night until the early hours of the morning and I didn’t care that I could possibly fall asleep at my desk at work. I never wanted to be the one to say goodbye first because I never wanted our conversations to end. I just wanted to absorb as much of him as I could all the time. The butterflies were real and I loved them. I loved him.

I can’t recall if I was visiting for the night or if I was suppose to spend the night at his place, but I do recall that I needed to leave by a certain time to pick up my daughter from her boyfriend’s house and take her home. It was just an ordinary evening and we were just hanging out, watching TV and enjoying our quality time. I remember getting that feeling of slight sadness and a form of longing for him because I knew I was going to have to leave him to drive all the way back home. Right before I was about to tell him what I needed to do, I looked at him. I just looked at him and smiled to myself. He was so gorgeous. Very handsome. And I knew I was already missing him even though I hadn’t left yet. I finally pushed the invisible lump out of my throat and told him that I needed to go. And I’ll never forget what happened next…. Sigh.

He looked bummed. I mean, he looked genuinely bummed. I was amazed because I knew right then and there that he felt the same way I did. I didn’t want our evening to end yet and neither did he. As sweet as our goodnight kisses were, I didn’t want to give him one yet. And neither did he. At some point, the wheels in his head starting turning and he shared a thought, or rather laid out a plan to me and to this day, I smile and feel so wonderful when I think about it. It was one of those rare times when I felt cherished, wanted, and loved. And I fell in love with him all over again. I think I fall in love again every time I sit back and remember this.

So the plan was this: he would drive me all the way back to my hometown, pick up my daughter, drop her home, and bring me back to spend the rest of the evening with him. It was simple. It was brilliant. It was utterly sweet. And he totally had me at, “So this is the plan….” I was so smitten with the thought that this gorgeous man wanted to keep me with him as much as I wanted to stay with him. Talk about a loving rush.

I know that we talked during the drive to get my daughter and I know we talked on way back to his place, but all I can really remember is the way he made me feel. I kept glancing over at him and smiling. I kept thinking, “Oh my gosh, I love you.” There is nothing better than knowing that the person you want to be with, wants to be with you too and feels it just as much as you do. It’s an amazing feeling. It lets you know that you are not alone in what you feel and think. You’re not crazy for being borderline obsessed with the other person and it’s ok to want to always be next to him (or her). Whatever it is that you are feeling, it is great to know that maybe, just maybe, they are feeling it too. Always hold on to that loving rush.

The Last Time

I don’t know about all of you out there, but when I fall in love with someone, I fall hard. I give everything I have from the get-go and I almost lose myself immediately trying to shower my guy with as much love and affection that I can possibly squeeze out of my mind, body, and soul. It’s safe to say that I can get pretty intense at times. In my own mind and reality, I am doing a good thing. Heck, I’m doing a great thing. I mean, what person doesn’t want to be loved and cherished by another person, right? Almost everybody I know wants to be somebody’s special someone. And that goes for me too. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a sucker for romance movies and I adore everything from sweet nothings to sweet everything. So yeah, when I fall in love, I take that guy into my world and wrap both arms around him. Heck, I’ve probably even wrapped my legs around a guy like a little kid hanging on to their parent’s leg. Remember I said that I can get intense? Yup. Like that. But of course, there’s a downside to everything. So what’s the nemesis for this? Hmmmmm…

I’ve pretty much lived my life firmly believing that you have to give what you want to receive. It’s true to a certain extent and it’s far from perfect. My logic was that if I loved someone so much and treated him with love and showed him loved, then that is what I would get back from him. I believed that if I was good or great to someone, then he would want to be great or good right back to me. The problem with this is that this was all my logic. This made sense to me and I believed it for its face value. To me, this was a simple equation that everyone should follow. This “golden rule” would make everyone happy. And if everyone would just follow my simple logic, then the world would be a better place and we would all bake cookies and smell like fresh, clean laundry and run through the meadows picking wildflowers with the animals dancing around us… Yeah, again, this was my logic, so please bear with me. I am happy to report that I now know that that is not the case.

The last time I tried to see Omar was such a heartbreaking experience for me. It’s still fresh in my mind like it happened yesterday. I remember feeling alone, unwanted, and abandoned. I felt like I meant nothing to him and in that moment in time, it didn’t matter if I even existed or not. He didn’t care about me and he didn’t even like me, let alone love me. Just the thought of it brings tears to my eyes and this heavy, hurtful feeling in my chest. Wait…. Did you hear that? That’s the sound of my heart breaking all over again. Sigh.

Omar was going through an extremely tough time. His anger and frustrations were spilling over into our relationship. I tried my best to just let him go through all the motions and I pushed my patience to the outer limits. I did everything I could to try to make him smile or be happy or laugh a little. I drove myself insane trying to think of things to do and things to say to make things better and easier for him. But instead of getting better, it felt like things were just getting worse. The more I tried to be there, the more I felt pushed away. The more I tried to love him, the more I felt like he hated me or resented me. The more I tried to go out of my way to make things easier for him, the more I felt taken for granted and unappreciated. It really sucked.

It got so bad that I finally reached a point where I didn’t care to reach out to him anymore. I didn’t text him like I usually did throughout the day. Instead, I just started responding to his text messages. Every time I heard the sound of a text message notification, I would get a real quick thrill of hope and anticipation because I knew that if he texted me, it meant that he thought of me. But the feeling only lasted a few seconds and I would just reply normally and then close my phone like it never happened. I also didn’t allow myself to want to see him. I got accustomed to the “I will see him when he wants to see me, even if it isn’t very often” mode. I knew that I always wanted to see him or be with him. I was content doing anything or nothing at all, as long as I was next to him. But it was feeling like he didn’t feel the same. It got bad. I mean, I was totally shut out and shut down from our relationship.

So on this particular evening, I was waiting “patiently” at home for him to “want to see me.” I think he had taken the day off due to fatigue and pain and he got hit with some bad news from his car insurance. As if this poor man didn’t have enough to deal with, this was an added topping to his sundae of disaster. So he decided to rest some more, which for me, meant more waiting. Ok, fine. I would wait. Well, my patience wore thin after about two hours. One of my good friends invited me to go hang out so I thought it would be a good idea to wait and hang out with friends rather than wait in my room and just drown in irritation and impatience. So I got ready and then texted Omar what my plans were. He responded and it wasn’t a very nice text. I decided that we weren’t going to “solve” anything via text so I called him. No answer. Voicemail. Ugh. I called again. No answer. Voicemail. I took a detour from where I was headed and started to drive toward his place. I kept calling. Always no answer. Always voicemail.

About 7 minutes from his last text, I rang the doorbell and my cousin let me in. I took off my boots and walked down the hallway to his bedroom door. I could hear the TV on inside. I knocked. No answer. I knocked again. And again, no answer. I was about to knock louder when I heard another sound along with the TV. I knocked again and listened. Are you kidding me?? Was that the sound of… Snoring? I stepped back in disbelief and tried to process what had just happened in the last ten minutes. I knocked again. The snoring got louder. I couldn’t believe what he was doing. The louder or longer I knocked, the louder and more obviously fake his snoring got. Was this really happening? Was he really doing this to me? Me!?

I got angry and decided that very moment that I was going to knock all night long. I texted him and let him know I was outside his door, even though I knew he already knew. I also let him know my intentions of waiting there all night until he opened the door. I knew he was eventually going to “wake up” and need to go to the bathroom at some point in the night. And when he did, he would have to trip over me first. Ha! I slumped to the floor and sat down leaning against the wall with his bedroom door on my right side. I knocked. I literally formed a rhythm of my knocks and pauses. I had so many thoughts going through my head and felt a roller coaster of feelings.

After what felt like forever, the snoring got lighter. And then I heard it. I heard him move in bed. And then I felt it. When you lean against a wall, sometimes you can feel what is happening on the other side of it. And that’s what happened. I felt him open his closet. I heard him put down a glass on his dresser. It sounded so much like a wine glass but it could have been just a regular glass of water. I don’t know and I was fuming. I kept listening. I heard him get back into bed. I still couldn’t believe this was happening. Why would someone do this to someone who did nothing but want to love them? I sat outside his bedroom door for a little over an hour. Just sat on the floor and waited. My heart broke. I saw myself ripping my heart out and throwing it on the floor in front of his door. I couldn’t take it anymore.

I picked myself up. I left my heart and pride on the floor. I walked back down the hall to the living room and saw my cousin sitting on the floor. I got down on the floor with her and put my head on her thigh. I curled up and cried. I cannot even begin to tell you how much I hate crying, yet there I was, like some helpless, pathetic thing, crying; on the brink of sobbing. He didn’t love me. He didn’t want me. He didn’t care about me.

Ok Omar. You win. I left.

Learning to love Omar. To be continued…

Integrity

They say that when a person is lying on their deathbed, he or she starts going through thoughts and visions of the life they lived. They start to see what really mattered, what should not have mattered, and what should have mattered enough to make a better choice. Then come the thoughts of wondering if he or she even made a difference in anything. We start to wonder about the integrity of our entire life.
I think we do the same thing when it comes to the end of a relationship. When it is over and we have no control about it being over, all of a sudden we realize what really mattered, what should not have mattered, and what should have mattered enough to make a better choice. Did we make a difference in the relationship? What was our part in the integrity of the relationship? All of a sudden, the small things that were good become big memories in our mind. Beautiful eyes. A gorgeous smile. An infectious laughter. A loving touch. A tender kiss. A safe embrace. A genuine “I love you.” Suddenly all that is all that matters and becomes all you want back. All the petty bad stuff suddenly seem bearable. But it’s over. Gone.