all that glitters isn't snow

I crawled out of my hole at about eight thirty last night. I had to see the world outside the cream-coloured walls that I'd come to meld with; had to peel myself off my sheets and go out, smell the icy chill of life after dark.

As I walked I saw the frozen drops of dew glint off parked cars and dustbins, saw the blades of grass as they sat glued to their roots in the wind, and as I walked further I saw chunks of white, beautiful ice spread out gradually over the earth around the naked trees. 

It was beautiful.

The air smelled beautiful, the night felt beautiful, the frost looked beautiful.

I took a few pictures with my phone; stopped in the middle of the path to take blurry pictures of what couldn't qualify as snow, or even hail, and stopped short of bending down to touch it, rolling around in it, and breaking out in hysterical laughter in the light of the street lamps.

I have seen snow. I have touched it. And yes, even then, I stopped to take pictures - and I will again, if it ever snows while I am here. What the ice was to me was new, clean, and so fresh I wanted to be it, but no matter how hard I tried to pretend, it wasn't what I really wanted it to be. It wasn't snow.

Yesterday I lost someone I had already lost before, but for what I hope is finally the last time. It had all the makings of something special - last year - and it took months to accept that something can look like love and not mean anything. It appears he had been living by the words of Sara Goodman as performed by Blair Waldorf, "The fact that we can't be together doesn't mean I won't love you". I used to think that was more my sorta thing. 

I used to think a lot of things about myself, like the fact that I was patient (lie), level-headed (only in public) and only believed in love in absolute terms (recently re-thinking that one). In the last year I have learnt that I can have feelings for more than one person at the same time (shocker), that rules - specifically mine - need to be smashed to bits before they can hold true, that, in the words of my mother, you can choose to stop loving someone if you have good enough reasons, because while love is a powerful feeling it is also, more than anything else, a choice.

I love that right in the middle of 'the last goodbye' I paused long enough to say (to myself), "It hurts, there's a physical ache in my chest." It's good to know that despite all my self development I have remained fundamentally overdramatic.

Sometimes it is easier to pretend that something is real just because it has all the trimmings of your dream. 

Things that are real rarely have any trimmings at all. I miss my friend, but not him.