Like Joel in Eternal Sunshine, I rush headfirst into women that show me affection. I’m particularly hopeless if they fit into the ideal of a woman that I have created during the last decade of drunken nights where I’ve fallen in love at the bar with someone new over a glance across the top of my tumbler of bourbon. Smart, doe eyed, wild haired, a singer, a writer, a creator, a lover, tattoos, someone that doesn’t mind the sweet words I may lay before them. Living in Los Angeles it isn’t difficult to find a woman that falls into this category. The trick is finding one that has a heart as large as mine, one that appreciates waking up to a message sent in the middle of another whiskey-drenched night in Silver Lake telling her how much I like her mind and how it makes me think about life.
Perhaps it’s the adrenaline that comes with meeting someone new. That feeling of wonderment you had when opening a present as a kid on Christmas morning. She’s a present, placed in front of you by some twist of cosmic fate. Now, all that’s left to do is unwrap her, layer by layer, and see what’s inside. What does she fear? Love? Want? Need? What does she want to hide? What will be that seemingly inevitable point where the wonderment and adoration turns to disappointment and sadness because she wasn’t what you had imagined? When your constructed notion of her being runs into the cold wall of her reality and you realize that, once again, you’ve done this to yourself. Placing the ideals you’ve handpicked from all the women before her into a basket and unfairly hoping that this one, she, will finally live up to each of them.
It’s hard to tell whether that adrenaline high is worth the heartbreaking crash that comes when she’s gone. Those days when you woke up to say hello to her, rolled over and kissed her awake, the days where nothing mattered but the smile on her lips. When she’s gone, you wake up each morning with her on your mind. Go to sleep with her on your mind. Constantly replaying conversations throughout the monotony of your day. Wondering just where it went wrong. Wondering how she’s doing. Getting annoyed each time that the text chime on your phone isn’t the one you’d set for her when you realized she was worth separating from everyone else. Moving through each day in a daze gets old quick but is there really anything that can be done until you’ve extinguished all of her flames in you? She set my world ablaze and like all fires it burns until there’s nothing left for it to destroy. She’s left me charred, burnt, and hurt and it’s up to me to grow again. Ideal? No, of course not. But, for some period of time I get to live, love, and burn as hot as any star above and that’s enough for me.
