Today was wonderful. Upon waking up, I had a cup of green tea infused with pomegranate, washed my hair (these days, washing my hair is a pretty huge deal. you just do not even know..), and got ready for church.

I met up with Gretchen, Lydia, & Jamie and we went to church in Ramstein. The worship was great, but I got a bit lost in the message. (However, I fully attribute that to my ADD, which has somehow flown under the radar for 24 years.) I think I miss Zack most on Sundays, especially when I go to church. I miss looking over and seeing his closed eyes and face full of passion, and I miss hearing his strong voice belting out songs. I miss him putting his arm around me and sharing a quick smile before a prayer. And I miss just feeling dizzy with love and sending up a million prayers of thanks for this husband of mine. But I still had a great time today, surrounded by sweet friends.

Throughout church my stomach was eating itself with hunger, so afterwards we quickly headed onto Ramstein's base and had lunch at Chili's. (!!! You would not believe how refreshing it is to just see an "American" place in the middle of Germany.) Lunch was delicious, Jamie tried fried pickles for the first time in her life, and there was plenty of entertaining conversation throughout.

After lunch we made the fatal mistake of going into the BX. For you fortunate souls that are stateside, Ramstein's BX is the equivalent of Target. You go in needing maybe 1 item, (sometimes not even that, you just have nothing better to do) and come out about $100 poorer. It is unreal how much money you can manage to spend in under an hour there, on stuff 30 minutes prior to walking in, you had no idea you needed. When we first walked in, they had a display table with...(please brace yourself for this) Victoria's Secret PINK stuff for the ARMY!

You do not even want to know how hard we spazzed out. I guess Zack will find out the extent of our freak-out session when he checks the bank account. :)

Ventured to the commissary at Ramstein, where I picked up some fresh strawberries that smelled so sweet, and were only $1 a basket. Also got some vanilla almond milk, which was Jamie's suggestion. I didn't notice a great deal of difference, nutrition-wise, between the almond milk and the regular skim milk I buy. The almond milk had 10 more calories per serving, and also a tiny bit less calcium & Vitamin A per serving as well. So I'm not sure that it's really a healthier alternative for me. I just wanted to try something different, I guess. I also bought some chocolate protein powder to add to my smoothies. Ever since I bought a Magic Bullet, (okay, it's not that exact brand, it's some knock-off..but whatever) I have been psycho about smoothies.

My typical smoothie is: any random frozen fruit I have on hand (most often strawberries, mangos, & raspberries. I do frozen because I'm too lazy to make ice trays)*1/2 banana *1/2 cup of plain Greek yogurt*splash of 100% juice (normally cranberry) *handful of spinach *sprinkle of cinnamon.

After our adventures in Ramstein, we drove home. As usual, I was sad to say goodbye to my friends. It's insane, I really could hang out with them 24/7. Although I'm not sure they'd feel the same. ;)

I got home and before I lost motivation and my bed sucked me into its magical grasp, I threw on some workout clothes and did my first BodyRock workout because I was too lazy to go get my P90X DVD (yes, I readily admit to having laziness issues.) I have to admit, I was seriously impressed by BodyRock. Most of the workouts are very short, which I love. I chose a longer one, 22 minutes, and it straight kicked my butt. I still feel a little wobbly, in fact. But...bad news. My #1 GirlCrush for about 5 years now, has been replaced by the BodyRock girl, Zuzana. I expected her to be this raging youknowwhat, but she was surprisingly down-to-earth, had a cute Russian accent, and was really encouraging.

(Well, maybe 'replaced' was a harsh word. Rachel, I will forever want you to be my best friend.)

The cherry on top of my gelato of a day was as I was stepping out of the shower, literally one foot in the shower and one on the ground, the phone rang. As soon as I heard that perfect voice on the other end, all the butterflies alive on this Earth made their way to my stomach and I smiled like a goofy creep throughout the conversation. A rather short conversation, but hey...beggars can't be choosers, right?

I guess that's enough pointless information. This was my first attempt at a "This is what I did today" post. Sometimes it's nice to just write without thinking too much.

I am mostly okay. But when the sun comes tumbling down and it is time for bed, the only way I can fall asleep is to read a book until my eyes burn. The words trickle off of the page, and I have to struggle to make it to the end of paragraph before inserting a makeshift bookmark. I half-watch the book slip down the sheets and onto the floor. Then I mostly sleep. Nights are the worst.

Today has been an awesome day because I got to go to the dentist, and for the following reasons:

1. Even though I haven't been to the dentist in about 4 years, my teeth were in excellent shape. Going strong on 24 years cavity-free.

2. I heard someone use the phrase "HAM" in the waiting room.

3. I got my teeth cleaned, and perhaps it's just my imagination, but they look much whiter.

The only negative was that I am going to have to get my wisdom teeth removed at some point in the next year. I told the dentist I am going to wait for Zack to get back, though. I jump at almost every chance I get to be babied by him and plan on milking my "surgery" for all it's worth. ;)

doin' it & doin' it & doin' it well

I was driving home the other evening and it struck me, quite suddenly, "I am doing it. I am really doing it." By 'doing it' I mean, going through a year-long deployment. The feeling that accompanied that thought was a proud one, one that made me grin to myself as I drove through the backwoods of Germany.

If you had asked me back in January, if I thought that I would be anywhere near to the adjective "okay" a few weeks into the deployment, I would have laughed bitterly in your face. The weeks, months even, leading up to the highly-anticipated, much-dreaded goodbye were some of the absolute most dismal and frightening points in the Lizack timeline to date. I'm really not sure that I have ever cried so much in my 24 years of being on this earth than I did in those dark, late days of January.

I remember lying awake at night, trying desperately to memorize the shape of his lips and the curve of his fingers on my waist. I remember fervently praying, pleading, making random deals with God to prevent this deployment from happening. I remember the hot tears that sprung to my eyes when I even thought about not being with my best friend for an entire year. I remember breaking down into heaving sobs outside of the commissary after realizing the food I had just purchased would expire after he left, and I'd have to eat it alone. I remember obsessing over the "last" everything. "Today is our last Monday together, this is the last time we'll eat here together, this is the last time we'll sleep together, this is the last time I'll watch him shave." I could go on & on with how many "lasts" I created for us that final week. I remember the way my heart clinched, stomach flopped, and tears rolled the day he came home wearing his black, infrared flag patch.

The day we said our goodbye was chilly and grey, and my contacts had clouded over by 9 AM. I was leaving that day for a weekend trip to Dublin with some friends, (friends so amazing, they deserve, and will receive, their own post soon) so Zack & I clutched each other outside of Gate A at Frankfurt Hahn, had a hurried kiss, and I choked back sobs as I watched him walk down the hallway.

Something about the goodbye didn't feel right. While obviously there are very few people who would ever feel "good" about saying goodbye for a year, there was this critical feeling of settlement I knew I needed to have, and I just did not. I quickly found out why within minutes of landing back in Germany after our trip. To make a long, annoyingly complicated, and stressful story short: Zack's company did not deploy when originally scheduled, so he actually was home the entire weekend I was gone.

Luckily, we both possess too much zeal for our own good, and arranged it to where we could get a final, "for-real" goodbye. I tried my best to look pretty before seeing him again, but there is only so much you can do with having had little to no sleep, crying fits that have occurred every hour on the hour for four days, and a heart that isn't sure if it's going to, or wants to, keep beating. Still, I got in our car and drove quickly through the inky night to where he was. I hardly dared to breathe as I waited for him to come to the car. I looked down and saw that my heart was pounding so hard it was causing the little charm on my necklace to flit back and forth. Finally he came, and we had our moment. We kissed, we cried (okay, so maybe it was just me crying, but for the sake of the story I shall pretend he was crying too), we laughed, we held on to each other tight until it was time to go. That goodbye felt firm, final, and peaceful. I didn't cry as I drove away, I felt this overwhelming sense of calm rush through me.

This was happening, it really was. My husband was leaving me for 365 days. And I was okay.

I am okay. Far better than I could have ever anticipated. Of course there are days I feel sad, but not that debilitating sorrow I used to feel towards the deployment even when his body was still by my side. It's a moment of sadness in which a few tears might escape when I find an old note he wrote me, or my heart might painfully twinge when I hear his voice in my head, "Jus leeeesten!", but it usually passes quickly and I resume my everyday life, sans Zack.

Yes, we are doing this deployment. And yes we are doing it well, as well as we know how.

I am so overwhelmed.

I have been wanting to make a new post for a while now, but so much has happened since May of 2010 that I hardly know where to begin.

So I am not going to furiously type out a long-winded recap of the past 10 months. Instead, I will start clean and go forth, with the promise of a new entry at least a few times a week.

If you came here looking for "good" writing, you will probably be sorely disappointed. In the lovestoned haze of newlywed life, my writing has become lazy, and the words that used to spill out of my brain so easily simply do not want to arrange themselves into any sort of coherent thought process.

I will occasionally use this blog as an outlet for some of my writing ventures, but mostly I would like to use it as a cheap and easy form of therapy, especially for this next year. Also, as a way for my family and friends to keep up with my European travels.

So, here is to no more neglecting of my blog!

travels

5 Mai

Zack and I have almost always had a long-distance relationship. So we know each other’s personality inside and out, and our minds are so in-sync. Since being here, I love learning all of the stuff about him I never got to experience. I don’t mean in a physical sense, I just mean seeing his actual belongings and watching him do ordinary, every-day tasks. I’m not sure I am making sense. Yesterday I cleaned the apartment, (or rather straightened because I haven’t gotten to the heavy-duty cleaning yet) and I found myself falling even deeper in love with him, and I was almost positive that couldn't be possible. Yet, just seeing his old t-shirts and finding all his little journals filled with scribbles, I couldn’t stop smiling. Even watching him get ready for work is so endearing to me I can hardly stand it. I definitely wasn’t expecting cleaning the apartment to be a pleasant task, but it ended up being wonderful just getting to see all of Zack’s stuff. That sounds weird and borderline stalkerish.

By the time Zack got home from work yesterday, I had compiled a very large list of things we need for the apartment, and groceries. We tried to go to a home decor store, or what I assume to be a home decor store…it said BOSS in hot pink letters and had a punching fist. Okay Germany, really? But the store was closed. Everything closes annoyingly early here. It’s like everywhere, except restaurants, has bank hours.

So we went to the grocery store. The produce was the first section you walk in to, so it was easy enough to figure out what things were. BUT THEN, as soon as I turned the corner I start panicking because even bottles and boxes with pictures on the front were confusing me. I didn’t know what anything was, and I’m still not entirely sure what all we bought. Luckily, Zack knows a lot of German words. So with his knowledge and using context clues, I think we managed to buy most everything on our list. Except for baking soda. We couldn’t figure out if it was flour or baking soda, and don’t think I’m stupid, you try it. Zack is so brave about speaking with anyone, anywhere, and Germany has proved to be no exception to this. Where as people probably think I am a mute because all I do is smile and nod my head and wave goodbye with the occasional (and extremely difficult) “tschus!” Zack walked right up to the butcher and asked for some chicken and beef in German. He even learned a new word during that little exchange. “Alles”, it means “that’s all.” I hope I get braver.

I wanted some nachos and a margarita something fierce last night, and sweet Zack tried calling all his friends to find a place but they didn’t know of any. Our GPS found one, but it was about 30 minutes away and I am irrationally skeptical of GPS systems, especially ones that speak in German. So Zack cooked [!] some delicious spaghetti with sunflower seeds [yeah, I don’t know, but it was good] and we had a great time chasing each other with the toy that came out of my latest Kinder egg because we are 12 years old. Not your average Cinco de Mayo, but how could I ever want to trade it for anything?

I stopped believing in romance somewhere between mile marker 121 and 123. It sounds so flippant, I love it. I wish I could be that cool, nonchalant girl who is simply all right with the fact that she doesn't believe in love anymore. But I'm not. I used to be the most hopeless of romantics. The girl who searched through page after page of dumb love quotes or who spent hours creating mushy play lists for her ipod. Oh, and the daydreams. I would rather not even get into those. I had the most lavish, sickeningly sweet dreams possible. Please believe white picket fences were just the tip of the iceberg. So for me to have something that used to be such a fundamental part of my being, simply decide it doesn't want to live in me anymore and just fly away.... was upsetting, to say the least.

I blame it on a little kid in a minivan, to tell you the truth. Speeding down the interstate, I came eye to eye with this tiny boy screaming about something in the backseat of a van. His mother was trying to appease him and looked so tired. Not the kind of tired that you get after pulling an all-nighter or tripping into work with a raging hangover. But the kind of tired that takes years to cultivate. The tired that seeps into your bones, your soul, and makes itself a permanent resident. Is this what I am going to be reduced to? Is this what I have been dreaming my whole life for? To look like a battered soldier with no medals to show for, except a rattling van, whiny children, and a husband who looks at his twenty-something-year-old secretary a little too long? I cannot do that. I will not do that. I am tired of trying to squeeze myself into this impractical mold society has carved out for me. Maybe I don’t want a man to define my other half. I am a whole, thank you, and plan to stay that way. I can’t image telling half of my being to just die, only to replace it with a male who leaves his dirty socks on the floor, gets off without worrying himself about my orgasm, and doesn’t know my favorite flower.

I loathe the fact that because of societal norms I feel guilty for not wanting the life I’m supposed to want.
I want to live in as many countries as possible, hopping borders like a frantic fugitive.
I actually do want a child, two in fact. One of my own, to see if my stubbornness and unruly curls are hereditary, and one that I have adopted.
A husband really isn’t necessary, but I would like a man that shares my dreams, tells me when I’m being a bitch, and lifts me up when my legs forget how to stand.
I want to see things I didn’t know existed, feel things I didn’t think were possible, and grow so rich in knowledge, even the gurus would envy me if they had the ability to envy.
I want so much, more than I think I will ever fully be able to obtain.

So I quickly exited the Interstate. My dreams seemed to be dying with each passing car and jadedness was starting to set up camp in my bones. I wasn’t quite ready for my hopes to start peeling away like the paint on my old car.

The world was, is, still too beautiful to me.

crossed my fingers, but didn't beg

For a girl of, what I like to believe to be an above average intelligence quotient, I am depressingly stupid. Stupid to the point it’s almost amusing. Except it’s not, not really at all. How could I have gotten it so wrong? Why did I allow you be an exception to my ironclad rules? My heart is the most guarded of all my internal pieces and Fort Knox has got nothing on my invisible walls. I typically trust no one, and doubt most things that come out of people’s mouths. So for the life of me, I cannot understand why I opened up so quickly and so completely to you. After one meal of smoked salmon and a 4 AM half-asleep kiss, I neatly reached into my chest, scooped my heart out and pinned it onto my sleeve, leaving it loosely hanging by a few threads. I was like a flower who, sensing some warmth and being anxious for spring, bursts open, spreading its colorful blossoms for all to see…only to realize much too late it’s still icy winter. And instead of being careful with everything I had gingerly placed before you with the solemn innocence of a child spreading out her most prized shell collection, you backed away. Muttering a feeble and barely audible, "Sorry" you left to get back to life before my inconvenient arrival. I'm glad I can be the punch-line of a few jokes, the reason you get a high-five from your guys, or an ego boost to ensure yourself, "yep....I'm still hot". Because you weren't just another scratch on the side of my bedpost.
You were a little more.
And I was more than a little stupid.

window pain

My room was beautiful and bright. There was light flooding everywhere and I could dance around in it for hours and hours, wearing the biggest smile my face would permit. I even sang, and I do not sing. But then he came and flipped the light switch. In one swift movement, with the casualty of one starting their car or sneezing, my room was plunged into darkness. Abruptly I stopped singing, dancing, and smiling. Blindly I stood there, letting my eyes adjust to the sudden dark. He was gone, along with the light and I was alone, as normal. For a while I sat there, numb and without sight.
A window.
I remembered I had a window. I stood up slowly and with child-like caution felt my way towards the small square of glass that was hidden behind a curtain. I pushed back the fabric and light came streaming onto my face. It wasn’t as bright as the overhead light, but it was pure and real and there was no one that could turn it off. From that moment on, I decided I was never closing my curtains again. I may not always have the buzzing glow of a fluorescent bulb looking down on me, but I will always have my light. And you can’t take it. Go ahead and come flying into my room with the breeze, I’ll welcome the extra light. But when you leave just as quickly as you came, I’ll still have light. And I won’t need yours.

EPIPHANY/Liza/5pm

VO (:30)
How in the world am I going to be a journalist? Our job is to condense “just the facts” into cold, impersonal little snippets that even the most simple minded of people can comprehend. Our job is to tell people about the world, without really telling them about the world. Our job is to check our opinions, compassion, and sometimes morals at the door. Just the facts. The cold, hard facts that the public needs. But that is not me. No. I am too full of passion, verbose sentences, love, and sprawling adjectives. [I get off on alliterations and pathetic fallacy, for God’s sake.] “The accident on I-40, just west of mile marker 218, resulted in the death of one Greensboro man, James Talbert. Authorities are still determining whether alcohol was a factor in the crash.”

No. No.

James Talbert isn’t just a name scrolling across the teleprompter. That wreck isn’t just a 20 second story on the six o’clock news. The viewers will never know that James Talbert had greenish blue eyes that his fiancé adored or that he cooked the best lasagna ever, or that he hated his job at the bank and secretly dreamed of being a pilot. They will never know that those strategic camera angles of a mangled car they just saw on the television forever changed so many lives. That wreck wasn’t just a filler story the producer threw in out of desperation when the new school story didn’t pan out; it was the end of a life. The viewers won’t know a brother sobs himself to sleep every night or that a broken hearted girl is sitting on her bed with a bottle of pills shaking in her hand.

I cannot be a part of this madness. I cannot paint my face into a mask of camera appropriate makeup and fluff my hair to epic proportions. I cannot take out the faint southern drawl that emerges when I drink or flirt and turn my voice into a non-regional robotic one that reads sentence after sentence of meaningless phrases. I cannot watch as the power hungry higher-ups in the network force me to twist and tweak the truth into stories that our advertisers will be satisfied with. I cannot watch as the world around me is quite literally falling to pieces and all I am doing is telling people about it with a thirty second VO.

Actually, I can. I can do all of that. And I hate myself for it.

I hate myself for seeing an ambulance and wanting to follow it in hopes of a juicy wreck. I hate myself for secretly praying the mother whose son just left for Iraq breaks down into sobs in the middle of the interview because that would make an awesome sound-bite in my package. I hate myself for mindlessly reading headline after headline and not really absorbing any of what I’m saying. Oh, the AIDS rate is up in Africa? Should I put my enunciation on ‘epidemic’ or ‘government’? Hmm, an office building collapsed in Russia? Should I say ‘close to 2,000 people were killed’ or ‘more than 1900 people were killed’?

But that’s what I am supposed to do. Deliver the facts. Just the facts.

Keep your opinions, compassion, and morals tucked safely away in your pocket. Only let them out in the safety of your home, when you’re watching a foreign version of yourself droning away on the screen.

Only then you’re allowed to feel.
(# # #)

It was inevitable. He was my best friend for the majority of my formative years. He knew me like the back of his calloused hand and I knew him inside and out, piece by crazybeautiful piece. I could tell you where every mole on his body was, how he smelled sweetest in the morning, and the intricate way in which his green eyes told stories. So that early summer night in the back of his dusty red pickup truck, it was inevitable. From the moment we crossed that terrifying threshold from friends to lovers, I knew this was a defining moment in my life and I would never really be the same. The passion and love that was ignited in my veins over the course of the following two years is what epic love stories are made of. It wasn’t the kind of relationship you settle into, slowly putting your feet up and stretching out on the sofa while becoming comfortable. No. It was me teetering on the edge of a jagged cliff, losing my balance, and plunging headfirst into the unknown.
It was the kind of love that keeps you on your toes and out of your mind.
Never before had someone had the power to twist me into a messy rubber band ball of emotions, only to gently straighten me out into flowing musical notes moments later. No mind-altering drug could ever compare to the highs I experienced with him. At times I felt inebriated with giddiness and floated around on puffy, rose-colored clouds, all because of one text message or kiss. I smiled when alone in my room and daydreamed of our curly, golden haired children with moss colored eyes. I melted at his touch, felt sparkles when he broke into his mile-wide grin, and cried when he was hurting.
But Newton wasn't kidding. What goes up must come down. The lows I experienced were the most dismal, dark places I have ever ventured in my life.
It. Was. So. Messed. Up.
But in the most perfect, brilliant, shining way messed up can be. I don’t think I have fully recovered from that burn. It was a white-hot scalding one that reached down into my inner self and seared it all the colors of the rainbow. And you know what? I am glad that burn will never go away. People go their whole lives and never experience that kind of beautiful intensity. I am thankful beyond all reason that I carry such an exquisite battle wound. Sometimes I just want to rip myself open and show it to the world, smiling at people’s horror and jealousy. Maybe one day I will play with that kind of fire again and again I will ride the tidal waves of this boy, this boy who is my mirror image.
I think it’s inevitable.

excessive speed was a factor

The obnoxious yellow lights on a stop light make me light-headed. They just look so smug, confident I will stop in timid obedience to their powerful color. Truthfully, I think they're just pathetic, like a dog who's all bark and no bite. I have no patience for them. My real competitor is the awe-inspiring red light. When I am approaching one, a sick yet delicious thought bursts into my head and sends an adrenaline rush soaring through my system. What if I didn't stop? What if, instead of putting on the breaks, I floored the gas pedal? I get almost drunk with the thrill of that prospect and always spend the next few moments coming down off my psychotic high. Sometimes when I'm soaring through intersections, I think about another car sailing straight into mine and this horrible beautiful catastrophic explosion of metal, rubber, and other things even I dare not say aloud. It even has a soundtrack [mafia movie opera music] and would undoubtedly happen in slow motion. I would fly up and away, watching everything happen with the most curious interest. And then I would keep floating away, maybe getting caught with the breeze, like bits of Earth. Because that's all we are anyway.

"Sunburn"

Again and again
we grease our supple skins,
spread ourselves on the earth
that wants us back,
think we'll go slow
but evening finds us sick
feverish and weak
in our baths of tepid tea.

Here's where I try to say
this might be like love:
turning ourselves 'til
no single cell is spared,
beneath our lids,
"I'll stop before anyone knows
what a fool I've been,
I'll rise from this
just as soon as I'm beautiful."
-Catherine Doty

PSA

Attention members of the male species:
Women were not placed on this planet for your boyish amusement. We are not your disposable playthings. We are not a moist pink mouth, a round ass, soft skin, a pair of tits, or lavender smelling hair. We are not here at your convenience for when you want to nut, impress your friends, or talk about something over than video games and sports. We are more than that magical place between our thighs, more than dainty little things in dresses, more than something to do when bored.
What about all of this is so inherently difficult for creatures with two dangling appendages to comprehend?
Whether it’s a whore to screw or a damsel to rescue, women are always an object to men, an activity to pass the time, something to validate their own self worth. Here, in the year 2008, is this really how little progress we’ve made?
Let me stop there. This is not an impassioned commentary of current societal gender roles or a feministic, frenzied man bashing.
This is a plea, a simple plea from one human heart to another.

Prove me wrong. I am begging you.

"YOU'RE ON A BEACH," my logic hissed at me through what I just know were clenched teeth. The kind your mother does when you're misbehaving in public and she's embarrassed and doesn't want others to know the real you. I was on a beach. And I was having a panic attack. I don't really know the technical definition of a panic attack and it probably wouldn't even qualify as one. But to me, it was very real and very intense and very much happening at that mostly inappropriate moment.There were little kids to the left of me building stupid sand castles. I don't think I'll ever let my children build sand castles. Or maybe I will, but insist they knock the sand creations over before the waves do. Just because. [Hello control issues, do you want to come out to play as well?] To my right, my family was laughing and chatting away as usual. About what? I have no idea, but that's no real surprise. Also as usual, the conversation was lucidly flowing in one of my ears and out the other as quickly and calmly as the breeze lifting up from the sea. The sun was hot and the lifeguard dutifully watching over all of us was even hotter. And I was having a panic attack. Something about looking at the sea just really does a number on me and my already astoundingly absurd imagination. Life, love, what's the point, brevity, love, passion, dreams, love, death, human nature, love blahblahblah, all of those things just came at me like the kind of waves surfers cream themselves about. The book in my lap, The Bell Jar--admittedly not the wisest choice of reading material for a budding Esther Greenwood, fell to the sand as I let my brain explode. I let myself get so worked up into a mental frenzy that I was fairly confident it would take a lot of pills or a quick dive off the end of the pier to silence it.
That is, until I saw The Couple.
My mind shut off and focused on this young couple walking down the beach. Probably in their late 20's, average in appearance, but that really does not matter. They were laughing and smiling and looked so in love it almost hurt me. But when they reached the point where they were directly in front of me, their demeanor's changed rapidly. Clearly there was some sort of conflict going on that I was unaware of and the nosy journalist in me was just dying to find out. So I sat up, squinted, and basically gawked at them. They stood there arguing for at least five minutes about, what I finally discerned, how far they would walk. She wanted to keep walking, he wanted to turn around. I assumed surely one will compromise, because that's what people in love do, right? No. He promptly turned his back and began walking back. She turned on her heels and began walker further the opposite way. Still, I thought, at least one of them will turn back around to look at the other one.
No.
They kept walking. Never once did the other stop to turn around. I watched them until my eyes got blurry and the sand swallowed them whole. I had just placed my entire belief in love on this one couple's shoulders and love had let me down yet again. So I picked my book back up and began reading again, because that was the only thing I could think of to do.