The Woman Before
This post is either a story or a monologue. Although I’m very unknown as to what this might be… I am certain that this is for the men and women who’ve lost *that* woman before.
You will succumb to your human condition eventually. After a week, a month or a year… a bender even. You will find a girl or a woman that can replace the void that inhabits your life. The type who is addicted to her phone, a brunch addict, Moet and Chandon drinker, a Hopeless Millennial, who gives blow jobs first before touching your lips… She is the one that you will meet after you’re finished from that Woman Before.
Do her texts and calls come early in the morning? As she pours her coffee and eats her toast, her only thought being you? Do those pixels of words come from her heart? Those grainy calls just words slipping from her lips as though she has to do this to keep you by her side? Do those texts and calls match the words of poetry she attempts to write? But they’ll never hit you in the gut, rip out your heart or make your body ache… like they did for the Woman Before.
Beside her bed, there are books, titles of classics and bestsellers. But those books haven’t been read and are the attempts of a New Years Resolution made every year. Instead, she exchanges the words of Margaret Atwood, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte and Paulo Cohelo for the text chain of messages conspired by the friends she brunches with. You’ll notice the dog-eared pages, only ten pages into the book. She’ll never learn the plot, the characters, the meaning of the story. Instead, she’ll know that she has to be at the brunch spot at ten.
When you drive your car, does she sing along getting the lyrics wrong? Does she hum or does she scream the lyrics? Did the Woman Before sing and laugh? Or did she stare out the window knowing that whatever destination you were headed into was going to be final?
Is her body naked, does she suck and caress and kiss like the Woman Before? Her kisses touch your neck and your chest just near your heart as it beats for someone else? Does she whisper sweet innocence into your ear despite the seduction of her words? Does she grasp onto you the same way the Woman Before had done? When the air smells of sex does she hide it with candles or let the scent be raw… allowing the lust and proof of lovemaking sit in that bedroom for a while longer? Or does she conceal it in shame with the scent of salted caramel or dark rum?
The Woman Before wore black lace lingerie, she wore it beneath her jeans and blouse, her hoodie and sweatpants, her tight dress and her plain shirt. She wore it for you sometime. This girl wore the same, and you couldn’t help but call her by the Woman Before’s name.
Does she scream your name and breath fast? Does she hold you once you lay still caressing her hair… do you even caress her hair? Does she say she came when really you left her behind? After all, it’s about you now. You stare into the oblivion thinking about how the Woman Before could never fake… but you think too hard and begin to realise maybe she faked a few or two.
Is this girl a model? Her skin as airbrushed as Victoria Secret adverts and her pores so small. Are her thighs thick and easier to love and handle as she sits with your hand between them? Does she have rolls when she slouches or darkened skin in places she never wanted them to be? The Woman Before may have had those beautiful stretchmarks near her thighs and dark circles below her eyes, but she never hid her natural, for it was how she was more beautiful. But you call them both beautiful… but there are different forms of beauty in your eyes.
Her conversations are vague and basic. Not a word from her mouth is sugar and honey. Instead, it’s vanilla and plain. She admits she wants to be a writer but you find it harder to confess that her words are vague and dull in comparison to the messy cursive handwriting that the Woman Before once had. Her words made you hang on by the cliff, gripping onto dear life. Her words made you feel feelings that you have never had the pleasure of feeling before. But you stay silent and listen to her complain… about her friends, her family or how she has to wait another week before Netflix releases its next series?
When the Woman Before laughed, it was as though an angel sang through her lungs. When the Woman Before yelled, it was as though the Goddess of Destruction, had arisen and possessed your dear Woman. But later you would find her persuasion and reason had gripped you more…But this girl, she hardly raises her voice, but when she does it feels monotone. Hurt and sad. You are familiar with this… aren’t you?
When she watches movies, it’s always romantic comedies… Although the Woman Before enjoyed Nancy Meyers, she emerged in a world of Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock and Avan DuVernay. Black and white people on black and white screens. With storylines and characters filled with colour and contrast.
The Woman Before was a wanderlust by heart. She dreamt of living the life of The Alchemist and swallowing the universe before it ended. She wanted to touch the lives and the grounds of foreign beings and places. She wanted to live a life of memories and carpe diem. The girl scrolls through her Instagram liking those airbrushed filtered photos… just wishing that she could stay at that five-star resort in Bali. The girl wants to go… just like the Woman Before.
When it’s been five weeks, months or years… or a bender… that’s when you realise that no one will ever compare to that Woman Before. No sex, no poetry, no alcohol, no drugs, no adrenaline rushes could ever replace the love and kindness and loyalty you once had… Despite this girl giving it to you, you will ignore that because you and she will know that she deserves much better.
That girl will leave with her bags packed, her clothes concealing her body, her heartbroken and ready to go.
You’ve seen this before… with that Woman Before…
