Words to Whisper

If you keep waiting until you’re ready, you’ll be waiting for a very long time.

“I am trying to love in a world that might matter. My mother calls me a fixer. She says that’s why I have bad taste in cars. And men. She says I want projects. Something to heal. She says I should have been a doctor, but instead I fix old houses. So maybe she’s got a point. But it’s not that I want to heal broken bones. I just look at those houses, with their crumbling roofs, and their sunken porches, and I can almost see the hands that first crafted them. I can see the care that went into their design. You can’t create anything without wanting it, first. And I think if it was worth wanting before, it should be worth wanting now. Even if it’s a little worn. A little beat up by the weather and hard living. How can anyone get through life without some bruising? So it’s not that I think I can save the world, you know. Maybe my recycled soda cans won’t make that much of a difference. Maybe it won’t matter how much I ride my bike. But when I look around at telephone lines that let us check on loved ones three thousand miles away, or sidewalks that give a path to wheelchairs and baby strollers, or a bench that was built just to give strangers a place to rest, I think: Love was behind that. There can be love there again.”

Have you ever sat there and felt the heartbreak coming long before it’s happened?

I wonder who still dwells during moments of nostalgia and find themselves rummaging through old photographs, old texts, and even old ramblings from a blog full of youth, promise, and unrealistic notions about love and adulthood. 

“I hope you find someone who knows how to love you when you are sad.”

I’m so tired.

I want to be in an unfamiliar city, surrounded by unfamiliar people, starting over.