The oceans between my ribs

I used to go swimming often, around the same time mulberries would start to ripen and colour the ground beneath it. Dreaming up dragons and fanciful stories that I can’t remember. All I recall is that deep feeling of serenity that came with floating on the surface, warmed by the afternoon sun. It feels like a lifetime ago and the things that are clearer to me, feel a lot less calm.

I am waiting for hindsight to be less unforgiving, for a gracious light to be cast over things I can’t change until the details blur and the edges soften. But the way memory works is strange and cruel. It stains the way those mulberries stained your soft cotton handkerchief when you were young. You have to wring your life out, between your fists and soak it in cold water. You have to agitate it until the suds turn colour and then you try to breathe again.  A day or so in the sunshine, that’s all it takes sometimes.

I’m expecting a letter soon.

 An email, to be more precise. I wrote it on some dreary June night at some point in the last two years (I can’t remember when) but I’m expecting it to pop up in my inbox soon. It’s a thing I do, you see, I send future versions of myself emails** and pour my honest soul out when I feel conflicted and lost. When I just need to tell myself something or tell someone and not feel like I am burdening them with heavy pieces of my soul, unnecessarily.  

And in the next week, I will get the first one. From a younger version of me who was probably just reaching out and wanting to hold something that only becomes tangible much later. I can’t remember what I said. Usually, these get tangled in the memories of late night exam revision or buried beneath deeply stressful things that I bury and move on from.  I can’t even expect the softened edges or the rosy haze because it would be a voice, clear and raw. And she would have had a lot on her plate at the time. Messy circumstances and a heart that did not know itself. I have these emailed lined up for years to come. At my deepest valleys and on the peaks of my tallest mountains, they have been quickly typed and sent to a random date and forgotten about.

They are markers along a path I forgot I had taken. There are letters from the broken girl, the euphoric girl, the girl in love and the girl dipped in hate, the girl who prayed and the girl who could not remember to because she was terrified of the looming exam.

 Letters about the oceans that exist between my ribs and people who have drowned there. The oceans where I had sunk down into, trying to reason with myself and the tides that wore the jagged rocks down, eventually. The oceans where flotsam and jetsam of shipwrecked regret float. Those things tossed overboard in times of distress. 

 Letters about dying and then blooming again. Pleas to a future self to make things right again. And: I did. I made some of it right. And that was the point, wasn’t it? In writing those “I hope you love yourself deeply by the time you read this”, it was the possibility that the version of myself who read it would have those things I deeply wanted for myself at that dark moment. All the questions and hypotheticals and fears I couldn’t quite address – they are all monsters I have named now.

Whatever the letter says, I know I made some of it right, eons before I fathomed it would be possible. Conquered dragons I did not know the names of, but I know them now. I have wrung my life out until the colour ran clear.

** The service I use to send emails to myself can be found at www.futureme.org

To love a bookworm- A letter for him

My dearest friend,

To love a bookworm is a romance unlike any other. She may be 17 or 68 but she remains the girl who just bought her first novel and feels that same rush of delight when she buys a new book.

 First of all, you must be patient with her silence when her lips hint at a smile. Her thoughts have become lines of poetry that are entwined with thoughts of you. At least they are... Sometimes.

 She might scribble them in the margins of a notebook but to read them to you would render her shy and gauche. But her mind does compose poems for you. She does wonder about practical things like shoes and the straightness of her fringe. Walk along the shelves as she hunts for a new treasure , hold her hand or the books she considers.

 Miracle if you get to choose a book for her- never mention the book again. She will tell you how you just have to read it the moment she closes it. She will not beg but heed her wisdom. Until then, she is likely to have a stock of books that are either read as soon she walks out the shop or she will let it lie until it calls her name out. But mention it and you awake a dark beast of guilt for not reading the book you picked out for her. And it will taint the reading of the current book in her hands for a chapter or three.

You must remember that you are a romantic hero of sorts in her mind. Since she was a little girl she wondered about you before you knew her. She created a mosaic of all the "perfect " men. But one hopes she realised you are not going to fit that muddle of Darcy and Heathcliff and Marius.... But she sees all the little glimmers of all her great literary loves in your smile. You might be practical or sporty or you may read but not the way she does. But she knows that you cannot be expected to live up to her ideal and instead you begin to define the idea of love that she has. Romance her in the way she pines to be romanced- to be courted and written letters (a thoughtful email will suffice, dear boy). She may have a secret love of umbrellas(Because Jo in Little Women found herself confessing love under one) or she might run her hand along brick walls to chance upon Diagon Alley. These quirks may be secret or she will tell you. Don't ridicule her little dreams that she builds on clouds of fancy.

Her moods may be strange. After all, Mr Rochester broke poor Jane's heart and left your beloved inconsolable for a week when she put the book down and refused to go any further until she felt calm again. Her tears may fall while reading The Notebook and it is the cruelest deed to laugh at her. You don't understand how deeply she feels for Noah in that moment. The next time she has a book she may burst into laughter and feel no shame in rocking in her chair as she tries to explain the joke to you. (Nod and try to see the humour). 

She will have ebooks, old books, new books, bits the dog chewed books. She may have all those or just one type. They are her family and she will likely hold them dear for as long as she lives. Enid and Roald will stay, even if you don't. There is a list of books she wants to keep for her children and a list she will ban from her house . She will scrunch her face up in dark anger if you or anyone suggests she gives her old books away. Because what if she has the urge to reread all the Anne of Green Gables books (which should be read every 4 years or so... Just in case) and she could not find them? Exactly.

She will have a mind that always craves a story and a heart that yearns for the kind of love she thinks doesn't happen in this century anymore. Surprise her and read a book(or try). Her eyes will sparkle like the heart of the mountain and you will be the one to rule over her heart. 

She will never say it - But try to love her as much as she loves you and her books.

Kind regards.