It rained hard that night when I last saw her. It rained so hard that you would think it never rained before. Someone said rain makes people sad, but as rain washed the glass window of the car she rode, we waved our last goodbyes, not really knowing if that rain made me sad, or not.
As she drove off to the next set of traffic, so is my life, sometimes intermittently stopping for people like her who, in many ways, I find insanely not different as I am.
I walked my way home as the rain poured insatiably, washing the empty crossroad, clearing it of people I regularly meet but never really get to know more.
I thought about the things she said, about her happiness and not getting it. About being scared, and being angry and desperate. About losing and gaining. About running away, or taking a temporary leave out of life.
My shoes were sullied. My toes felt cold. A trickle of rain water found its way to my neck from my umbrella’s broken wing. I thought about the many sweltering nights she spent alone, at the mercy of broken wisdom and faltering self-esteem. How many of us changes so fast, like dreams can be traded as quickly as we change our underwear? Then why dream in the first place?
But when I saw her the last time, that night when it rained so hard, I sensed a different kind of happiness in her, like that brand of happiness a parole can give to a prisoner, somewhat disorderly but sure, and trusting, and complete.
I remember the many sunny afternoons we filled with conversations of things we don’t know yet talk about so much. We talk about people who never really care about us or what we have to say about them. We talk about which dream is good, and which ones are phony, and which ones we cannot really have because we just can’t. But we were one in the belief that something out there is reserve for us, a desk waiting for our things to fill, a coffee machine waiting to brew one every morning, and big houses waiting for us to occupy. She talks about why some things are solid facts, and why others are too far, indifferent.
I listened to her quite often that summer before these rainy days came and she was a fan of the things that I said. We would sit by the park, trusting that each conversation would find ways to make things better. But every time we depart and go on with our unconnected everyday, I am gripped by the hollow fact that things are different from where I sit and that she is burnt and I am not. I wonder what big Jem would tell her little sister, Scout about this: that you can’t really speak about a person unless you wear his skin and feel the insides of his shoes?
My Chucks were sopping wet as I reached the door step. I rang the doorbell, and threw my cigarette just as the door opened.
She must have been caught in heavy traffic, that night when it rained so hard, inside a city she hardly knows and will soon leave. I cannot forgive her for giving up first, for a let down which never came up during those sunny, volatile afternoons of the summer. But I wove my goodbye, the last in the many years to come until the next hello, that night when it rained so hard that you would think it never rained before, because alas, she found what it is that she has never seen before, far from the dreams she spoke of, far from what I exactly know and believe in, and she has given up her everything for it.
This is the song I was telling you about. I think I have years to learn to play this on my guitar so that the next time we’ll see, I can finally say that “When flowers gaze at you… they are not the only ones who cry.” Godspeed, my friend.
20 something, quarter-life crisis, loss of love, name it, nothing's weird.
