The Landslides
Emily Tyman, “You Are Very Special to Me”
by Jennifer Araneo
The Landslides
“Landslide”- Fleetwood Mac, Rumors, 1975
“I took my love, I took it down
I climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow-covered hills”
We were both in the same place. I saw him, just across the street, on the other side of Seventh Avenue. Pretending he didn’t see me, pretending I didn’t exist.
“Til the landslide brought me down”
Why couldn’t things go back to the way they were, oblivious to the world around us? Before things became so complicated or either of us understood what love was, what it could be or what it couldn’t.
But I saw on his hand he still wore the wooden ring from that night, the one that started it all. The night of our first kiss. The same night we confessed what was underneath the four years of suppressed feelings. The night we first said those words that I dare not say anymore, they're too much, they’ll break you.
“Oh mirror in the sky,
What is love”
I didn’t know love could have multiple meanings. I guess neither did he. We were naive to believe that the now, the then, could have been just the start of our forever, for the rest of our lives.
“Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?”
It’s hard to believe two people can become strangers after what felt like a lifetime of promises. Yet somehow I know he still listens to the “Landslide” of Stevie Nicks’s life on repeat. That part of him couldn’t change that quickly, or ever, in fact. I know this because of how it can’t change in me, the one thing we still have in common.
I stared at the wooden ring I wore on my pinky. I guess we still have two things in common.
“Well I’ve been afraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you”
But we were more than a promise. We were a certainty compared to the likelihood of anyone else. Our plans were practical and realistic. Small, compared to the dreams of most, but they were enough for us, for the idea that four years of involuntary separation would be worth it in the end, because we’d have each other. At the time that was all we needed.
“But times makes you bolder,
Even children get older”
Like I said, things change.
“And I’m getting older too”
I was young, we both were, we still are. It’s just unfathomable to comprehend that one minute, your entire future is planned out in front of you, then suddenly it’s not. It disappears and spirals out into an unimaginable reality. One neither of us ever asked for. One neither of us wanted.
And now we're here. We're in a place neither of us like, doing things we aren’t passionate about, on paths to lives that resemble hell.
“Oh-oh, take my love, take it down”
We stood on opposite sides of Washington Square Park. The three days after the ending of our forever had felt like an eternity. Feeling broken, yet more whole than I had been in months. Me and my ring. Him and his ring. I wondered if they were still considered ours, though I believed that was no longer a term in existence, at least for him and I, no matter how many pictures we had or secrets we shared. We were no longer an us.
“Oh-oh, climb a mountain and you turn around”
I looked at him, somehow a stranger in what was seven years of a friendship, four years of a love.
“And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills
Well the landslide will bring you down”
But I know it’s not the same.
I don’t notice the freckles of blue that scatter his eyes anymore, just grey. I don’t see the way his lips gently curve when he’s upset, just a thin straight line of nothingness. I don’t find his messy curly hair charming, just that now, a mess.
“And if you see my reflection in the snow-covered hills”
I could recognize him for the color of his hair, the style of his clothes, and the look on his face when his eyes met mine. But he’s no longer who he used to be and neither am I. We became not the kind of people we once despised, but people who no longer saw love in the way we had it. We didn’t feel it anymore, and that's the most terrifying part about all of this.
“Well, the landslide will bring you down”
We don’t control when our bodies decide to stop loving someone. When our minds discover a new form of loving, that creates a new expectation for what love should be like, what it should feel like. It becomes a cycle of let downs. A cycle of sadness, of misunderstanding. A cycle of downfall, a cycle of disagreement, a cycle of discouragement, a cycle of disillusionment, of embitterment and depression.
“Oh-oh, the landslide will bring you down”
And then you’re left questioning if this is all worth it, love, I mean. When life is nothing but a cycle of landslides, ones you don’t see coming, when do you decide that being alone is better than building your life around a love that will break you in the end?