“If people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.” -Looking for Alaska
***
If people were rain, I was a hurricane - impossible to ignore, a force to be reckoned with, always on an adventure, never letting anything stand in my way, hurtling through life at top speed, never slowing down for anything or anyone… and he was drizzle.
Like the opposites of two magnets, our differences compelled us towards each other.
I was assertive and opinionated and impulsive and reckless and obsessive and unpredictable and wild. He was accommodating and congenial and gentle and easygoing and balanced and stable and mild. I could never sit still and he could laze in bed all day. I searched for answers, he was content with the questions. I was constantly thinking about what’s next, he lived one moment at a time. I was a big city, bright lights girl, he was a small town, seaside boy.
But don’t get it wrong. That didn’t make me any more of a person or him any less. The depth of a person’s character cannot be measured by its intensity on the surface.
Most people are drawn to the spectacular and exciting; they want something to distract them from the monotony of their own lives. Perhaps that’s why they’re drawn to rainbows and hurricanes; cloudy skies and drizzle are just, well, a little too ordinary.
But for a hurricane, excitement and chaos is the ordinary. He showed me a life that was different from what I had known, a life most people would call ordinary, average, and perhaps even boring. But as someone who had only ever lived life 100,000 miles per second, it was spectacular.
I packed my days with activity, fearing that staying put would kill me with boredom. But around him, it was almost too easy to do nothing. I don’t remember how the hours passed but I know hours felt like minutes doing nothing with him.
***
If people were rain, I was a hurricane - impossible to ignore, a force to be reckoned with, always on an adventure, never letting anything stand in my way, hurtling through life at top speed, never slowing down for anything or anyone… and he was drizzle.
Like the opposites of two magnets, our differences compelled us towards each other.
I was assertive and opinionated and impulsive and reckless and obsessive and unpredictable and wild. He was accommodating and congenial and gentle and easygoing and balanced and stable and mild. I could never sit still and he could laze in bed all day. I searched for answers, he was content with the questions. I was constantly thinking about what’s next, he lived one moment at a time. I was a big city, bright lights girl, he was a small town, seaside boy.
But don’t get it wrong. That didn’t make me any more of a person or him any less. The depth of a person’s character cannot be measured by its intensity on the surface.
Most people are drawn to the spectacular and exciting; they want something to distract them from the monotony of their own lives. Perhaps that’s why they’re drawn to rainbows and hurricanes; cloudy skies and drizzle are just, well, a little too ordinary.
But for a hurricane, excitement and chaos is the ordinary. He showed me a life that was different from what I had known, a life most people would call ordinary, average, and perhaps even boring. But as someone who had only ever lived life 100,000 miles per second, it was spectacular.
I packed my days with activity, fearing that staying put would kill me with boredom. But around him, it was almost too easy to do nothing. I don’t remember how the hours passed but I know hours felt like minutes doing nothing with him.
No comments:
Post a Comment