Visions of Johanna

What is up with me? I seem, as ever, unable to maintain a sense of proportion. It was one thing being terribly smitten with my ex all those years ago. I'd got to know her well and she was a good friend. I hardly know my Crush With Eyeliner at all. All I know is that she's a really nice person and that she's gorgeous. And here I am acting like a 15 year old girl. I was chatting with Gwen earlier and mentioned running into her this morning. The thing I didn't mention when observing that she looked stunning was that while we awaited the lift and I was taking a good look at her and making said observation, she smiled and my heart leapt.

I can't remember that happening often. One occasion, particularly vividly etched in my mind, occurred about a week or ten days after my ex and I got together. I was going out early on a Sunday to London to see the first game of the season and she was still asleep. I peeked through the door just before I left and all I could see was her head on the pillow with her long red hair cascading around her perfect serene face. My heart leapt then. I honestly didn't believe I would ever see anything as beautiful as my ex was in that moment, but I did this morning.

Crush With Eyeliner

Am I all better now? I've often wondered - I guess I often still wonder - whether I'm ever going to feel whole again, feel that the wounds have really healed rather than just that the cracks have been papered over. Time heals all wounds, so they say. An old cliché, one I've always thought absolute balderdash. I've especially thought so over the last three and a half years. But maybe it's true after all. Not that I really think things will ever be the same; I don't like living alone anymore and I find it harder to occupy my own time satisfactorily. But things are pretty good now.

Scars remain, just as I have marks on my forearm from every time I've burned myself on a hot oven shelf (an irksomely regular event), but the wounds have indeed healed. A few important things have changed; some over a long period, some quite recently. So you're over her, right? Put it this way. Would I turn her away if she showed up on my doorstep in a state some night? No, I wouldn't. I would give her a hug and kiss the top of her head, but when she went to sleep she'd be on the sofa, with the rabbits wondering who's the big bunny was over there. And when I drifted off to sleep myself, the face in my mind would not be hers and the long hair framing it would be a rich brown and curly rather than flame-red and straight. It's taken a long time for me to reach a state where I feel I could fall in love again. For the longest time I thought I would be broken forever, that I would never be able to open myself up again, that I could not let myself get into a position where someone could hurt me that badly again.

But here I am, with a big ol' crush on someone I met not so long ago. Yes, that sort of crush. The one where running into her by chance brightens a day, where you start to wonder if you ever did see a big smile as lovely as hers, where you notice that the lines around her eyes are sexy as hell. Parts of me really hates this, just as I always did whenever I was interested in someone. After all, nothing will happen. She's way out of my league. But mostly I don't mind. It's good to be alive again, to be nervous when I see her, to have that little voice at my shoulder whispering "Well, you know. Stranger things have happened..." Don't believe it, of course, but it's there and that's definitely a good thing.