The MIN Story: June 2014

screw it

11:17:00 PM

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to michelle's place, like finally

selfie 1:46:00 AM

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storybooks, it's been long

12:37:00 AM

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just one day, just one year

quotes 1:06:00 PM

Some beautiful words from the series Just One Day // Just One Year by Gayle Forman

Chanced upon the first part of the series in the library and Ash got me the second part of the series, 장말 감사합니당!!!!! ㅠㅠ

Just One Day (ending parts):

Maybe accident isn't the right word after all. Maybe miracle is.
Or maybe it's not a miracle. Maybe this is just life. When you open yourself up to it. When you put yourself in the path of it. When you say yes.
I wait for the fist of devastation, the collapse of a year's worth of hopes, the roar of sadness. And I do feel it. The pain of losing him. Or the idea of him. But along with that pain is something else, something quiet at first, so I have to strain for it. But when I do, I hear the sound of a door quietly clicking shut. And then the most amazing thing happens: The night is calm, but I feel a rush of wind, as if a thousand other doors have just simultaneously flung open.

I give one last glance toward XXX. Then I turn to xxx. "Finished," I say.

But I suspect the opposite is true. That really, I'm just beginning.
My body feels like it's no longer solid matter. It is particle dust. It is pure electricity. My heart starts to thunder. Could I have come this close only to miss him?
Because it's simply not possible. It's less possible than finding that one needle in a needle factory. Less possible than finding a lone star in the universe. It's less possible than finding that one person in all the billions who you might love.

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Just One Year:

Keep in touch. It's like a mantra on the road. This act you do. But it rarely happens. You meet people, you part ways, sometimes you cross paths again. Mostly, you don't.
Days like these go on for years. Its the one you want to last that slip away - one, two, three - in seconds.
Leaving people to jump to conclusions is sometimes easier than explaining a complicated truth.
The universe operates on the same general equilibrium as markets. It never gives you something without making you pay for it somehow.
The knot of dread had solidified into fist.
As the movie goes on, desire and longing and regret and second-guessing of everything at that day start building in me. It's all pointless, but somehow knowing that makes it worse, and it builds and builds and has nowhere to go.
It's heating me up and burning away memories that came alive in the dark.
I saw a sliver of Lulu. A reminder that she's not some fiction of my own making.
The devastation caught me off guard.
There's a difference between losing something you knew you had and losing something you discovered you had. One is a disappointment. The other is truly a loss.
The day, so seared in my memory, is just another day to everyone else. And in any case, it was just one day, and it's over now.
I am limber with relief.
My smile is taut, full of false sweetness.
I'm beginning to think I talked myself into a lie of my own telling.
There is a difference between bravery and courage. Bravery is doing something dangerous without thinking. Courage is walking into danger, knowing well the risks.
Sometimes fate or life or whatever you want to call it, leaves a door a little open and you walk through it. But sometimes it locks the door and you have to find the key, pick the lock, or knock the damn thing down. And sometimes, it doesn't even show you a door, and you have to build it yourself. But if you keep waiting for the doors to be opened for you...
I think of the... and the memory of it makes my stomach wave and flutter, like there's a small feral animal trapped inside.
I'm jangly with nerves.
I'm wishing I told her about the skinheads, about Paris, about Lulu. Except even if I tried, I wouldn't have known how.
My mother and I, we both speak Dutch and English. But we never could speak the same language.
He seems unaware of the theory dynamics he has theory dynamics he has stumbled into.
My anger feels hot and bilious but I keep it bottled until it double back and I'm mad at myself.
What's the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
At least no I know why I am here. Not for new beginnings. A hasty invitation that was foolish to issue, foolish to accept - and most foolish of all to solicit.
Though in some strange way, it seemed like another unsaid thing she already knew. Still, I wish I'd told her everything. Add it to my list of regrets.
I have wondered: If you could know going in that twenty-five years of love would break you in the end, would you risk it? Because isn't it inevitable? When you make such large withdrawal of happiness, somewhere you'll have to make an equally large deposit. It all goes back to the universal law of equilibrium.
I have never been in love but I have fallen in love many times. They are separate entities entirely.
I smile at the memory of it.
It's hurtling through the air, the wind everywhere, the exhilaration, the speed, the stomach in your throat, the hard landing.
Maybe it's the hash, but I actually laugh out loud. Because it's just funny - in a way absurd things are - and a rush of memory overtakes me.
"It's one of those one-in-a-million cases." Such comforting odds, except when you were the one.
It was like finding out the world was made of gossamer and could be so easily ripped apart. To be solely at the mercy of fate.
And yes, of course I do. I miss my father. I miss my grandfather. I miss home. And I miss my mother. But the thing is, for almost three years, I managed not to miss any of them. And then i spent that one day with that one girl. One day. One day of watching the rise and fall of her sleep under the rolling clouds in that park and feeling so peaceful that I feel asleep myself. One day of being under her protection - I can still feel the grasp of her hand as we flew through the streets after she threw the book at the skinheads, her grip was so strong that it felt like we were one person, not two. One day of being the beneficiary of her strange generosity - the barge ride, the watch, that honesty, her willingness to show fear, her willingness to show courage.

It was like she gave me her whole self, and somehow as a result, I gave her more of my own than I ever realise there was to give. But the she was gone. And only after I've been filled up by her, by that day, did I understand how empty I really was.
For the most part, he approached the renovation with the sheer enthusiasm of a child building a sandcastle at the beach.
"Maybe you're never ready until it's upon you"
He says it casually, dropping the suggestion like a piece of litter. I ponder there, on the ground. Maybe it's worthless, maybe not. I won't know unless I pick it up.
I can feel my heartbeat, in my chest, in my temple. I can't remember ever being nervous like this before and I don't quite understand it.
It's as if, unbeknownst to me, there is a.....
But the bright lights are rendering whoever is out there invisible.
I try to remember Kate's words, but they swirl in my head like a foreign language I barely know.
Like so many of the important things these days, the memory comes too late.
I should be elated. I should be relieved. But weirdly, all I feel is let down. Because this matters to me now. And if something tell me if it matters, maybe it shouldn't be easy.
She widen her eyes, to show the absurdity of such a notion.
It's an image I do my best not to conjure.
I sink down into my bed as very different emotions battle in out.
Shame and regret well up but then stop there, held at bay by some invisible force.
She says with exaggerated patience that lets you know she's reaching the end of her supply.
Inside I'm a little boy grinning on a birthday morning, about to get the presents that I try to get my face professional.
It's like an ache, how much I miss the. How much I miss her. I'm so tired of missing things I don't have.
It's okay. Because I understand all the ways of trying to escape, how sometimes you escape one prison only to find you've built yourself a different one.
Instead, I get laughter. Snorts and hiccups of it.
She is making it seem so slight, a bad piece of advice. But it feels like so much more. A wallop in the face, not a piece of bad direction, but a redirection. This is not the way. And just when I thought I had really found something. I try to find the words to explain this... this betrayal.
Lulu and I had started something, something I'd always wanted but also something I was scared of giving.
But there was a razor of uncertainty in my voice, and it cuts my deception wide open.
And I felt it all - the wanting and the needing - but also the fear because I'd seen what losing this kind of thing could do. I wanted to be protected by her love, and to be protected from it.
I didn't understand then. Love is not something you protect. It's something you risk.
My heart hammers in my head.
People are surrounding me, patting me on the back, offering congratulations and kisses and I'm her but I'm not - I'm still in some strange limbo where the boundaries of time and place and person doesn't exist where I can be here and in Paris, where it can be now and then, when I'm me and also Orlando.
My heart seems to expand as she leaps into my arms and spin arond.
I have no answer, no words. I just feel full.
We sit there a little while longer. I feel my whole body buzzing, humming. The night is perfect.
Her eyes slit into smiles.