"What are you scared of?"
"Hurting", she fumbled into the phone.
There was static, a clink and deafening silence. She checked her phone it seemed like she had been cut of.
She sunk back into her bed, buried her face into her pillow. Sobbed a little.
Her phone purred like an angry kitten, the light of its screen hitting her face. Next thing she heard her door bell ring.
She rushed to it, lest she wake anyone up. She opened her door only to find him asking her again.
"What are you scared of?
"Fear of not feeling like that ever again," she managed to say and he wrapped his hand around her face. They walked to his car and drove to the nearest diner.
Perky lady at the diner walks up to them, "What will you have love? Coffee?"
Her empty eyes said nothing, she played with the salt and pepper shakers.
"What will you have sir?"
"Blueberry pancakes for her and a coffee for me."
She looked up at him and smiles.
"I am being stupid, this makes no sense. Why did I do this to myself? I should have known better. I got carried away."
"Because you had no option, this was necessary, this was painful but it had to happen. There is no other way this could have played out."
Blueberry pancakes are comforting at 2am. He was happy to see her eat even if it was like a bird. "What do you want?"
She wipes her swollen eyes. "That is a loaded question.. one without an interesting answer. I am rather unsure what I want."
"Try. Think about it. What do you want to be?”
“Me?”
“Yes, if I said you can be whoever or whatever you want to be…make a list of someone’s or something’s you could be.”
"I want to be a friend. I want to be a good friend. I want to be the best friend a human can meet. I want to be a sister. A daughter. A girlfriend. A wife. A mother. I want to be best possible version of all those roles. I want to be the person who gets called at two in the morning. I want to be you, someone who shows up at the door with a heart and ears that is just ready for whatever truth or version of it you want to let out. I want to never judge someone based on their actions or appearance. I want to understand and realise that everyone is hurting, everyone has a story, everyone has a painful past. I want to hug everyone I cherish. I want to be nice. Sometimes, I want to be naive and whimsical. Sometimes, I want to be the girl with an attitude problem, the bitchy-mean girl with sarcastic one-liners. I want to be the cool biker chick, I want to be the girl next door, I want to be beautiful—off a magazine page, I want to be someone you can leave your kids with. I want to be the mysterious one, the one who you can never figure out, I want to be the rebel without a case. I want to be a writer. I want to be a poem, a song, a novella. I want to be the one you can’t stop thinking about. I want to be the one you never let go of. I want to be the girl who managed to walk away. The one that disappears like a magic trick like the movie Prestige. I want be Christian Bale. I want to be with Christian Bale. I want to be the reliable one, the organised one. The simple one. The one that has her life together. The girl who you think of and say she gets it and she knows what is really important, she has her priorities right. I want to be the secret keeper. The pillow. The one who dances till the end at weddings. I want to be the life of the party. I want to be the adventurer. I want to be the great big something in someone’s life.”
“I cannot believe you never told me all this before. You are so busy being everything for everyone you have forgotten to want things for yourself.”
Shouts to the perky lady at the counter, “Hot chocolate for her and keep the coffee coming for me. This is going to be a long night.”
“When you make promises to yourself that you can be everything to everyone, you are really just announcing to God and the universe, that I don’t need you. I am everything I need to be, and I am everything to everyone, so I don’t need you. I don’t need you to show up. I don’t need you to answer my prayers. I don’t need you to tell me that you miss me. Let’s be real, not needing people, and not knowing how to need people, is the saddest thing in the world.”
“But, I have people like you in my life. I don’t need more.”
“No. You are running away and using us as your mask. A mask to reflect what you want to feel. You want us to be happy because you have forgotten how to be happy for yourself. You say you want this but you are scared of receiving it. Your fear of losing it is far greater than your desire for it.”
“Yes because in the end, I circle back to where I started. Alone. Hurt.”
“That is because you never left that place. You are scared that no one will knock at your door. So you jump ship first and swim off to save the rest of the world...I can’t be all the things and neither can you. Learn to be something to a few. To remember to call that few. And cheer that few on. Stop wanting to save everyone. Wanting to stack the world upon your small shoulders and turn away anyone who tries to tell you they are here to help. You don’t know how to say— even in the smallest of small voices— please help me. Because you are too busy saving things in your large-hearted way.”
“But this is easy, its comfortable. It’s home.”
“It’s easy because you have trained yourself to not want. To not hope. To not believe. Because believing in something you can’t logically reason yourself out of is scary. Tell me this, what do you need from me?”
She wasn’t expecting the question. She didn’t answer.
He asked it again.
“As a friend, what is it that you actually need of me?”
“This. This what you are doing. A person who just stands besides me and nods as I finally catch my breath from the running and say, “I don’t understand this. I just don’t understand why this happens. And I try. And I lose. And I win. And I had it really, really good this one time and I keep trying to fumble my way back to something that doesn't exist anymore. And I am trying to pray. And I am trying to be an adult. But it is hard.”
“So ask for it. Ask for what you want. Learn to want and ask for it. Love does not have to be disappointment. And walls built up to keep you safe. Love is not the moats you built around those fairy castles. It is not basing your worth on being chosen. Love is all you ever wanted and the one thing you still feel too insecure to admit. You don’t want it. You need it. Everyone needs it. It is what makes us human.”
“Yes, but it is so complicated, it involves so many variables, so many things aligning together.”
“Don’t call it love. Create your own definition of it. If the words relationship and love scares you. Make up a word for it yourself. I call my version of love Ponte. It means bridge in Italian. A friend taught me the word and I adopted it. I find that if I can build a Ponte towards someone then we can meet half way on this Ponte and that for me is as good as any fairytale. I can loan you my word till you find your own. Build your Ponte with someone but do it together.”
The blueberry pancakes were ravished. And then it was time to go home, to move on to find her word.
