Light Like Dipped In Sugar
The Illusion Of Forever: On being young, and in paradise
I was leaning against the cool, tiled wall of my temp’s job industrial-looking bathroom and tried to steady my breath between ugly sobs. A metal screw was turning in my chest and it was churning out more tears than I could swallow. Snot was running down my chin and on my chest a red blotch formed in the shape of Africa. You’re forming a continent again, my friend Alyssa would say.
Heartbreak came over me the same way I had fallen in love: unannounced, with vengeance and severely physical. Years later I’d read somewhere that the physical heart actually does ache if you’re going through emotional pain. But back then, it was just me, leaning against the bathroom wall, looking at myself in the mirror, wondering, aching, checking whether the streaks of my mascara painting down my face were ugly-pretty or just ugly.
On our first date, I stood him up. Alyssa and I were backpacking. Chance — or fate, as I would tell myself later — had brought us to a palm-fringed island on the other side of the world. I was unbothered about the guy with the short curly hair who was looking to join our group to eat, surf and watch candy-coloured sunsets with. When we made plans to all go to dinner together, I forgot, kissed another guy in a bar and stumbled back to our bungalow…
