Words bring me back to a time...

I could never express how much I love words. Reading, writing, speaking... They'll always capture me and send me places that the other love languages (actions, touch, gifts, time) don't compare to. Not that words are better than some of those languages; just different for me. I was reading something this morning, in another friend's blog, that talked about falling in love, and taking your time to remember every detail about how it all felt, and that threw me back to those days in the fall of 2014 where Ethan and I would go to the park at 8:30 at night, and swing on the swings, stargazing, and telling each other just about everything, learning more and more about each other, and falling in love with one another. The times where we would go on random adventures, like to the caves out in Shasta, and we would hike around all day, and spend that time discussing what we liked, what we didn't. Laughing and chasing one another. I often go back to the first time we went out to the Bizz Johnson Trail in Northern California, before we were even dating, and think about how we climbed over rocks on the river, until we found this one that we could lay on and look up at the sky. How Ethan scooted his hand towards mine, and wove his fingers between mine, and how safe I felt in that moment. I go back to the night he asked me to be his girlfriend, (a week after the Bizz Johnson) how we walked around the park for hours, and played our guitars together. Sometimes I'll read something, or I'll be writing about something totally different, or Ethan will say something and it'll throw me back to memories like these, and I can't help the urge to write about them. The urge to document them so I can remember them, in detail, forever. It all goes by so fast! One day we're out in the rain, watching the waterfall, too happy where we are to go home, and the next we're married! 

Give me words that bring me back to those times and I could write for hours. Writing just always has and I believe will continue to take me away to those dreamlike places in my head where everything is good, and time seems nonexistent. Just like a photographer can look at her work and see her memories in her art, and a composer can hear his song and listen to his memories, a person who likes to write can read their stories and re-live those beautiful times over and over again, as many times as they'd like. I want to take time to reflect on these memories, and I want to write about them, in striking detail-- not completely on the blog (though I do like to share things like this), not on social media, but in my own journals, for my own enjoyment, so I can remember what the leaves felt like as they crunched beneath my feet that day, and if I even noticed it or if I was too caught up or distracted in a conversation that completely enthralled me; so I can remember what I was thinking during that conversation. So I can remember the salty smell of the ocean that I so love, and the way it felt to watch the waves crawl up to our feet, making them disappear for a second while the crippling cold water swallowed them up and crept away again, and I can hear Ethan's steady breath off to the side as he watches the waves with just as much enjoyment as I do. So I can feel my heart thud violently inside my chest while repeating back my vows and the words "I do" to the man who will be by my side for the rest of my life. I just want to write stuff that sends shivers down my spine as I read it over again-- to write something that makes me feel so immensely, what's being described, so I can feel all of these emotions again and again. 

I wish I wrote the way I thought,

Obsessively,

incessantly

with maddening hunger,

I'd write to the point of suffocation

I'd write myself into nervous breakdowns,

Manuscripts spiraling out like tentacles into abysmal nothing 

and I'd write about you,

a lot more

than I should. ~ Benedict Smith