Hello!
Buckle up because this week is all about the ‘one that got away’.
This love thrives in popular culture; it has become a dominating theme in books, film and TV over the years. Think Linklater’s ‘Before’ Trilogy, Rooney’s Normal People and Nicholls’ Sweet Sorrow – all of which link ‘the one that got away’ to first love. Perhaps this is because the acute tragedy of a love like this can only really be felt in youth when hormones are raging and life already feels unfair. The mere suggestion of a tragically timed, inharmonious Romeo and Juliet type love fuelling this dark sense of injustice within.
Though, whether you were romantically harpooned as a teenager or not, everyone has experienced the ‘one who that away’ in some form or another. We have all encountered alternative realities and missed opportunities - a job we didn’t get, a train we missed, a suggested route on google maps not taken. Life is peppered with untrodden paths such as these.
But with love… it is different. It can be torturously frustrating and heart-breaking. In the movies, one person finds themselves anxiously and dramatically waiting at the airport for the other to arrive. In life, it usually culminates in a dwindling set of blue messages and an embarrassing pattern of drunken calls. It is not a flame so bright that it explodes, destroying everything in its wake. It is a dying ember from a homely fire on a winter’s eve.
It is painful to be a part of. To watch the paint dry on love. To know you will never see the finished product. To know that you have created an empty show room, forever to be on display and not lived in.
Yet, these experiences which we foster in youth remain with us. They are our entertainment in old age when socialising is rare. We can look back on them with fondness, and relish in our own sweet innocence to the outcome. They are our school, our enseignements in life. The feelings never leave us, but rather we grow until they feel small.
So whatever your experience with the ‘one that got away’, or wherever you find yourself now, may this piece bring you comfort and/or healing. Come with me and live in the nostalgia for a moment.
Enjoy x
We both sat in bed, our eyes locked as the sun that shone through the window danced with the dust in the peripheries of our eyes. We weren’t speaking. We didn’t need to speak. Our bodies were a mirror to one another; the slightest twitch in his told me everything I needed to know. The way his eyes rested just a little too wide when his brain had paralysed his mouth shut in uncertainty and fear. The corners of it sputtering slightly like a dusty old car whose engine is not quite prepared to start. Usually this would irritate me, and I would want to squeeze the words out of him until they erupted viciously and incessantly from his mouth and chest. He kept so much in. Sometimes this made me so feel alone that the presence of his body next to mine became weightless and invisible.
Yet in this moment, I neither wanted nor needed him to speak for it would have ruined the illusion that we had stuck together so diligently. We were children drowning in the cacophony of scissors and paper of a nursery art glass – the impermanence, instability and ill-performed creativity of our creation so glaringly obvious for all those to see. But we didn’t care or at least pretended not to as our eyes locked and knees brushed against each other lightly – this too holding an instability reminiscent of the weak, unpredictable breeze trickling through the window on this hot stuffy day. This tiny morsel of touch provided me little relief and only sought to perpetuate the torturous tension of an ending that loomed surreptitiously in the air.
The whole set up made me queasy, and the sun began to feel too hot. I knew that when his eyes finally left mine, and I felt the springs of the bed lessen under the absence of his weight – a weight that felt almost natural, comfortable, and ever-present – that things would change for ever. That life would never quite be the same again. So I forced my eyes on him, burned them into his and pushed our limbs closer in an attempt to bridge the gap, close the divide, remove any space between us. I wanted to be suffocated by his smell and his arms so that the panic had no space to spread. This way, I would find some stability before it all fell away. This memory, his body, his being, historically so etched into my very soul, would soon dissolve. And so I held on tighter and kept him close one last time.
Until next time,
Hattie x
Another excellent and well written piece Hattie, well done. Keep it coming :)
🫶🏼🫶🏼