I replayed those words over and over in my head every day I spent away from him. I used my riotous emotions to fuel my art and found myself spending more and more time painting. I would feel him the strongest while painting, because that was when I was most in tune with my feelings. At the end of the two-week separation, I stood back and my eyes looked over my creations. All of them re-told the story of Noah and me, from our childhood friendship to the reunion I had with him on the beach a month earlier. Included in the middle was a painting that represented the darkness I felt during those years without him. The various dark colors swirled and combined to form a threatening vortex in the middle of the canvas. Just looking at it reminded me of how far sucked into that abyss I had once been.
It was important to me to acknowledge everything I had felt, and not just the good parts. Noah was curious about my paintings and wanted to see them. I had never shared my work before with anyone, but I wanted to give every part of me to Noah. A smile split my face as I thought of a creative way I could showcase my paintings in a way that Noah could visualize just how much he has always meant to me.
Still, there were moments when doubt would creep in, usually while I was asleep and most vulnerable. I couldn’t help but wonder if things were too easy between Noah and me, or moving too fast. I would laugh out loud when that particular thought occurred to me. Too Fast? Our reunion was twenty-two years in the making, so how could it be too fast?
You’re not the same men,my subconscious would whisper in reply. We spent countless hours on the phone or on Skype, but that didn’t mean I really knew him. We had a few weeks and a stolen weekend together, yet here we were talking about Noah permanently moving to Beaufort? While my heart raced with the excitement over the idea of forever with Noah, my brain cautioned me to slow things down.
The whirlwind of emotions, the euphoric highs and uncertain lows, took their toll on me and wore me down. My days were spent convincing myself that my turbulent dreams of losing Noah were just that, dreams, not reality – and that we belonged together. Fate wouldn’t bring him back in my life just to rip him away again.Right?I wouldn’t allow myself to believe that it was all for nothing.
“I have some bad news, Mav.” I heard genuine disappointment in his voice, but that didn’t stop my heart from doing a freefall in my chest. “I won’t be able to come home this weekend like I had hoped.” It felt like a bad omen and I found myself unable to reply. Noah let out a deep sigh when his words were met with silence. “Justin’s mother has been hospitalized and he needs to be with her right now. I’m so sorry, but I’m sure you understand.”
I wanted to, I really did. What kind of person would I be to deny someone time with their sick mom? Still, it felt like more to me than a temporary setback, a sign of things to come perhaps. “I do understand, Noah. Sure, I’m disappointed that we won’t have this time together, but it doesn’t change our long-term goals.” I told him what he wanted to hear and not how I really felt. I would find a way to deal with my internal demons on my own and not make him feel bad because things weren’t going the way I wanted them to.
I said all the right things in all the right places, but my heart wasn’t buying it. How had I gone from believing we’d be together forever to having so many doubts in such a short period of time? The more doubt I had, the darker my dreams got until I was convinced that my days of seeing the lightness that only Noah brought were over. I spent more and more time locked in my studio, immersed in painting. It was the only place I could feel connected to his light; it was there on the canvas for my eyes to see and my heart to embrace. If only I could get my mind back onboard.
