Observations of a Tragic Girl.

This was originally written circa 2005 and is the beginning of my series of writings known as "Observations of the Tragic Girl."

I feel like one of those pathetic girls in the movies that are flying away from someone they love just praying that that person is somewhere in the air following them. Not that there is anyone I wish was following me, just the thought that there should be. Maybe the hope.

I can't bring myself to lift my head off the hard plastic window, one eye covered by knock off hat. I look far to trendy for my liking. I must look so tragic...I'm really not, I just can't stop myself from looking longingly out of my window on this non stop flight to Albuquerque, questioning the world as I know it. Biting my lip doesn't help, it must look as though I am fighting back tears. I'm not, to my knowledge. Maybe I am just so so tragic I don't even realize it.

The male stewardess, who is undoubtedly gay (as most male stewardess's seem to be, that's why I love them) seems very apt on picking up on my sadness. He gave me the "You look pathetically sad" head tilt and asked what I would like to drink in the tone of voice people save for small children, elderly ladies, and of course the terribly tragic.

Just blinded by white. So this is what it is like to be in a cloud. As a child I loved to pretend I was lying in one, just watching the world below move at it's hustle and bustle pace while I just slowly floated on by without a care in the world. Yet now, as my non stop flight becomes encompassed withing the vast and blinding whiteness of the clouds I realize that heaven is not just above the clouds as my naive mind once led me to believe. There are no angels sitting in the clouds looking down on the sprawling desert below. There are simply one hundred or so people whose destination to me is unknown, but who must feel slightly what I feel at this exact moment. The feeling in your stomach as the turbulence bounces you hither and thither, and for that one split second those one hundred or so strangers and myself have the same thought, "Is this it?". Then as the feeling returns to your fingers and toes and you heart climbs it's way out of the pit of your stomach, the wind flaps tilt up and the wind surrounds the plane with it's unique voice. You have a last wave of nausea as the tires hit the ground below and then it's over. The desert wasteland once intermittently covered by clouds is now your entire circumference.

Finally gaining the strength to peel my head off of the window, I stand up and walk off the plane with my head held high and once again hide the tragic girl deep within myself and face the world with a confident smile and bright eyes.

Push the pedal down, watch the world around fly by us.

"North Bayshore" 

I have driven this road a million times, but this was the first time I realized how enticing and enriching it really is. It's filled with treacherous curves and is as tattered as a cherished baby blanket. It follows the shore of Lake Michigan and is enclosed with elaborate beach houses and foliage ranging from chartreuse to emerald. The evergreens on each side of the road grow high and arch into each other, forming a thatched tunnel overhead. There are at least five different shades of grey gravel loosely filling the hundreds of potholes, haphazardly giving away the roads age. It seems new holes appear every summer and the damages from the previous summers blunders are half heartily filled with yet another grey patch. It's skinny. When an oncoming car approaches, each car adheres to the other by driving half off the shoulder to accommodate one another. This of course is done out of habit, and those of us who are polished "Bayshore" drivers maintain our superfluous speed. 

Yet, not everyone prefers "North Bayshore".  You see there is a choice to be made when heading into good old Elk Rapids from our homely little subdivision; go straight and take the invariable, freshly paved, one colored, 55 mile per hour road. Or you can take the right turn. Sure, the right turn onto "North Bayshore" will lead you down a road that takes you five extra minutes to get into town. Sure, the highway is more efficient. Sure, the lack of bumps with save you a swig of Pepto. But that right turn, that one simple hand over hand motion on your steering wheel could open your eyes to hidden allure of the world. The highway is easy. You take the back way and you learn the unwritten ways of the road. The ways that aren't marked with signs or engrained into your head. On that beaten up path are the rules that you decipher by simply observing your surroundings, by using your common sense to safely find your way. You can take the highway and artlessly go through the motions of life, or take the the challenge and adapt to something a little different, a little more difficult. 

Perhaps when you see it from afar it seems daunting. Yet when you get to the end of "North Bayshore", the trees begin to dwindle into beach allowing light to once again filter through the windows of your car and fill your body with the warmth of Michigan summer sun. The road widens, a line of old grey road meets black, freshly paved gravel with one final "bump", and a lowly stop sign sits anxiously awaiting your arrival. 

Blue in Green.

Pride and Prejudice is playing on repeat in my DVD player and Elizabeth Bennett is offering me her constant companionship with the wit of her word. A hard cover copy of Sense and Sensibility is sitting on the bed next to me, begging me to open it and get lost in the beautiful complexity of Jane Austen's words. I close my eyes and go back in time, to the world of Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy. A beautiful one. An innocent one. I was not made to live in this day and age. Balls, Piano Fortes, large estates passed on through so many generations, traveling around England in a carriage to admire these beautiful homes, and all the time in the world to take in the world around you; that is truly enjoying life.

What has happened to love today? There are no such love stories as Darcy and Bennet. A painful aching love. The wonderful thing about Bennett and Darcy is it was not a perfect, mushy love. Their hate and angst with each other was simply due to the fact that they were so similar. Stubborn, proud, mild tempered, spoke their minds but (and here is the important part) not their feelings. This is where I have to ask, can two people so similar make it together?

Here I am, the spitting image of Elizabeth Bennett; stubborn, unwilling to accept help, closed off about my feelings but not my opinions. That is just simply who I am, but I know it and I am OK with all of those things, faults they may be. Yet those very things I despise about myself at times are in fact the common denominator in the men I become interested in. (which are few and far between) I will never understand why the selfishness, arrogance, and stubbornness will continue to be my weakness of the opposite sex. Masochism? Perhaps. "I could more easily forgive his vanity had he not wounded mine." - Elizabeth Bennet 'Pride and Prejudice'

I digress...

As I sit here listening to the song I had planned for us to dance to at our wedding, I realize that the world around me is moving at full speed while I, I am trapped in a stalemate. A world that no longer exists is my only existence.

The sounds of the cars passing and the people talking about their current lives are drowned out by the memories of us infiltrating my every sense. I stare into a flickering candle flame and am taken back.

The smell of you can still sweep over me at an unannounced moment and will steal me away from reality. I stifle a giggle as I remember your collection of colognes for every season. I struggle to push the sound of your voice from my unwitting conscious. The voice that told me “I love you” and the voice that took it back. In a half sleep I will feel your warmth pouring through me only to turn over to an empty pillow next to me, and a tear laden pillow under me. I envision your perfect hands, the hands that held me when I cried, the hands that picked me up when I was down, and that hands that let me go. But I have lost your taste. The taste of what it feels like to love you, kiss you, have you. I've lost it. I want it back; you were all that I had.

I look in the mirror these days and I do not recognize who I am. It's as if I only knew who I was when I had you next to me. Yet, I only realized who I was when I was without you. When I was with you I was so lost within you that I once again lost myself. I drove you away and I know that; so I drove away. I look in the mirror and all I see is a tragic girl...