Savannah Jaye

it’s the difference between leaving and being left that leaves me aching in the end, and even the act of coming is bittersweet with the knowledge of what succeeds. with each joyful reunion comes the promise of tears in a terminal.

for the first time in 8 months, i found myself at a place where everything begins and ends.

it felt a bit like shock therapy standing there, exposing myself again and again to the present pain, the trauma of your undeniable absence — waiting for my friend who was lost finding the exit, waiting anxiously for a semi-familiar face to walk out of that North Terminal Gate, waiting for a squeal and a run that i knew were to come.

while i was waiting i walked over to the seating area (you know exactly which one) and watched as lovers cried through their final goodbyes. i wanted to wish them luck but in the end it hit too close to home: i already knew their fate.

it’s really not all that ironic that a place meant for enthusiastic greetings is named after agonizing deaths.

Do you remember the last time we saw each other?

You held my hand and pulled me in.
Wrapping your arms around me.
Embracing me. Engulfing me.
Allowing us that one last moment of solidarity.

I recall breathing you in long and hard,
and thinking about how I may never get to smell your scent again.
Because I understood, even then, that it was our possibility.
Between my tears and heart breaks I tried my best to savor what was left of us.

And, after a time, I could feel you loosening your grip.
Feel you letting go. Feel you forming your final farewells.
And it was then that I first felt you slowly slipping from me,
as if you were an elusive fog that I knew I would never be able to catch up with again.

In this moment a normal girl would have let you go on your way.
She would have held back her tears long enough for you to be out of sight.
But I am not a normal girl, I am a lingerer.
And I will always be a lingerer.
So in that moment I resolved to do what it is that lingerers do best.
And I lingered.

Holding on for just a bit longer,
attempting to hide the last remaining tears with my head buried in your shoulder.
When I finally felt strong enough to release my clasp,
I was greeted with a kiss on the forehead and one last squeeze of my hand.
And there was your goodbye,
Almost oblivious to our too true future that we were accepting without so much as a fight.

The last time we saw each other you were standing on the other side of airport security, waving goodbye, with what appeared to be feet between us already feeling like millions of miles.

sometimes when someone says they don’t know or don’t understand something, they really don’t know or understand. sometimes people do and say things and sometimes things just happen; they don’t need a reason for saying or doing or happening. maybe i just need to be okay with not knowing and not understanding.

I have had three real, important, romantic relationships in my life.

The first was the boy who showed me I was capable of loving.
On our first date we bought fancy bottles of water and ate chips and salsa. We hung out every day straight for a month after that. He waited a week to hold my hand, and it was the longest week of my life. It would then be another two weeks before he’d build up the courage to kiss me. One night he dropped me off at my house after a date and I would never hear from him again. A kiss goodbye would be our final goodbye. I would never get an explanation or closure. I would just get a pillowcase soaked in tears. I would have dreary days and sleepless nights. I don’t believe I loved him, but I know I desperately wanted to love him one day. I wanted to support him and his dreams, and I wanted him to support me and mine.

The second was the boy who taught me to love.
We held hands before we even realized we had feelings for each other (I believe it was under the premise of keeping his hands warm) and the first time we kissed he was dating someone else. I honestly thought I loved him. I honestly wanted to love him. I honestly think he wanted to love me. I could say that our relationship failed because of miscommunication, mismatched personalities, or just because we didn’t try hard enough, but I know that when things were good they were actually great and that we tried harder than any relationship I’ve ever been a part of, romantic or otherwise. In the end we were just tired. Maybe it was giving up; maybe it was being honest. Eventually you just have to acknowledge that sometimes what you and yours want and expect from a relationship are just different things. Five days before we broke up I needed him and he wasn’t there, I kissed him and he didn’t kiss back, and I realized that loving someone wasn’t about all the things they did or didn’t do. However, I made this realization too late. After we broke up I moped about and cried “Woe is me!” I mistook fighting for loving and so in my retrospectives I told people that I had loved him. And, maybe, I did love emotionally. But I never, not for a second, loved him purposefully. Fighting isn’t loving. Fixing isn’t loving. Hanging in there isn’t loving. Acceptance is loving. Celebration, confrontation, and communication is loving. Understanding is loving.

The third was the boy who I loved.
I waited two months and he kissed me before he held my hand. Tonight I asked a friend of mine (who is madly in love with her current boyfriend might I add) if she loved any of the boys who she dated previously, and she bravely and honestly told me no, that she hadn’t. She said that there had been times where she thought she was in love, but looking back she understood the difference. I watched a movie last night that said the term “first love” must imply that there may also be a second or a third. I don’t know if one day I’ll meet a boy and I will be able to tell someone that what I thought was love was only the sum of foolishness and heartbreak or if I’ll be forced to spend the rest of my life confronting the fact that my first true love was also unrequited. Part of me hopes it is the prior and part of me hopes it is the latter. I desperately crave believing that there is somebody out there far better than what I know or can imagine. I also cling to the knowledge that he, and what we had, was special, and I never want to take that away. Maybe sometimes love is allowing someone the space to not love you back.

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if i had a hairy heart
would you still love me?
and if it were to be green,
could you still love me?

what if i had a zebra’s tail,
should you love me then?
and if it is a monkey’s,
will you still love me?

the reason i ask, you see,
is simply because you mean this much to me.
and just in case one day i may crack
i’d want to know this one sole fact:

can i let you mean this much to me?
and would you still love me if i had a hairy heart?

I wrote this poem in eleventh grade. I wrote it for a boy who had a reputation and was named after an adequate musician and a semi-famous surfing company. I had a nightmare one night the week before Christmas that he didn’t love me anymore and I woke up the next morning to discover that he, in fact, didn’t love me anymore. Despite that fact, I gave him his Christmas present that I had spent a month saving up for. The next month he came to my sixteenth birthday party and gave me a guitar pick. He never knew how to play guitar. He led me on. He dated other girls. He’d come back and “be my friend.” He transferred high schools. We stopped talking and it hurt. I thought that my life couldn’t exist without his friendship. I eventually hurt less. I forgot about him as much as one can forget. One day, years later, he added me on Facebook. He was living in another state, a high school dropout, getting ready to be a father. I denied the friendship request.

The house with the yellow gate.

It was whispered to me as if it was the kind of secret everyone knew, but none spoke of; immediately I had flashed back to my own house: gateless and void of all yellow. I needed to know what, and more importantly who, was behind that gate—despite the fact that deep down I was confident that I already knew the answer to those questions.

The next night as I left the beach, I resolved that to find this house and its notorious gate. It was time to meet the demons that had haunted me. I wanted to confront the very being that I blamed for everything—my pain, my hurt, my brokenness—in hopes that it could somehow make me whole again. 

Though I started my journey with no real sense of direction in mind, my feet just began: slowly at first but gradually picking up the pace. And they just feet kept going: one in front of the other. And then it repeated the process. One then the other. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. After what may have been miles, but could have just as easily been a few blocks, I finally had the courage to look up.

As I stood on the sidewalk, I looked across the street. At first glance it looked just like any other normal house: a door, some windows, a mailbox. Yet I instinctively knew it wasn’t, there seemed to be something off. Maybe it was the sole bedroom light on in the top left window. The strangely familiar car in the driveway, in the strangely unfamiliar location. Or maybe it was the waist high fence that went around its tiny yard with a small, yellow gate at its edge—inviting and foreboding at the same time (as facing your fears always seems to be). Eventually I cautiously walked up to the gate, ever so slowly opening it. In only ten more steps I was at the front porch, then in five more I found myself at the welcome mat, and with just another moment the doorbell would be mine to ring.

While trying to locate each and every last strand of courage within me, I abruptly noticed voices coming from the partially opened window. Mumbles at first, but later I’d come to recognize them as lovers’ sighs. They were whispered recycled phrases, lies they had told to plenty before. Promises made that had already been broken and gifts being given to someone other than their rightful owner. I stood outside hoping and wishing that just for a moment I too could enter the house and be apart of the exchange, but alas I knew it was not my fate, for I am not a violent person nor do I have the resolve to do something against my morals, so instead I opted to turn around and exit the yellow gate knowing that it was ultimately for the best.

I took the long way home that night; I had much to think about.

Maybe the problem was that for just a second I actually believed it.

For a moment I allowed myself to think that I could be an exception to all of the rules that have been entrenched into society for centuries. I was the cyclist who left the helmet at home, the driver who forgot to buckle the seatbelt, the child who talked to strangers, and the girl who thought she was different.

The irony is, of course, that as soon as you begin to feel comfortable being the exception something comes along to remind you of why there was that rule in the first place. You’re no longer different: you are just like every other person that fell for that false sense of security over the ages.

What I’ve learned?

I don’t want to just be different anymore.

I wanted to be different because I thought that would make me important and special, and ultimately I all I ever really wanted was to feel like I could be important and special to someone, at some point. What I realize now though, is that I don’t need to be different to prove my worth.

But more importantly, I’ve discovered what we needed wasn’t for us to feel different than we had before, but for us to be different than who we were before.

3 years. 3 months. 3 weeks. 3 days. 3 hours. 3 minutes. 3 seconds. 3 words.

Sometimes I think I can’t remember anything and other times I seem to be incapable of forgetting anything.  Memory is a fickle being: haunting us with what we want to lose and taunting us with what we need to recall.

I can remember the day I was late for my first summer class (I always seem to be late for the beginning).  I can remember what you were wearing when you walked away from me. I can remember what you wearing every time you walked back. I can remember crying in the towel aisle of Wal-Mart.  I can remember every conversation about coming and going.  I remember begging you to stay. I remember asking you to leave.  I remember winning you back with a wistful smile. I remember giving you the most thoughtful gift I’ve ever given anyone and I remember it not meaning a thing to me. I remember Finding Nemo. I remember drunk text messages. I remember sitting in the poetry aisle of Barnes and Noble. I remember sitting out by the pool and talking about constellations. I remember all of our unexpected conversations and I remember how I felt after each of them. I remember sending postcards. I remember drum sticks and wrestling belts. I remember Dead Poets Society. I remember car rides. I remember plays and organ recitals. I remember you making me watch UP in 3D. I remember the absence of drunk text messages. I remember walks at twilight with more fireflies than I had ever seen before in my life. I remember every band you introduced me to. I remember the night my parents asked me how old you were. I remember the longest week before you held my hand. I remember watching Planet Earth. I remember the longest text message I’ve ever sent. I remember happy and I remember sad.

They say those that don’t remember history are doomed to repeat it. Well, I can remember the first conversation we had and the last conversation we had, but no matter what I do I can’t seem to figure out what about our history I’m forgetting. So I’m still stuck on repeat: I was late for class that day, I was late for a bonfire, and I was late for church. I’m so sick of being late.

sometimes you just need to sit in a room with a guitar and sing praise and worship.

Prone to wander Lord I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love
Here’s my heart O take and seal it,
Seal it for thy courts above.

sometimes you just need to feel out of place and not know anyone.

So take me as You find me,
All my fears and failures.
Fill my life again.
I  give my life to follow
Everything I believe in.

sometimes you just need to be in a room full of people that want to be there.

Oh praise the one who paid my debt,
And raised this life up from the dead.

sometimes you just need to see the tears in someone’s eyes as they speak.

Lead me to the cross
Where Your love poured out. 
Bring me to my knees,
Lord, I lay me down.
Rid me of myself, I belong to You
Lead me, lead me to Your heart.

somtimes you just need to feel the passion of others.

Let the glory of Your name
Be the passion of the Church.
Let the righeousness of God
Be a holy flame that burns.
Let the saving love of Christ
Be the measure of our lives.
We believe You’re all to us. 

God will always lead you back to what you’re missing.

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And, more importantly:
I want to keep them.

Every last one. 

(which is probably cool enough in itself.)

and during a Master Class (a class taught to a select few SCAD performing arts students) he told them, “If I ask you what you’d do with your life if you couldn’t be a performer, the only answer you should give is that you’d curl up and die.”

I’ve always lived my life with a plan B.  If __________ doesn’t work out, then I’ll just do ___________.

Well, I’m sick of Plan B.

Photography is Plan A.

and if it doesn’t work out, then I have to curl up and die.

because each time I take a photo I’m reminded why I’m here and why I push myself.

It seriously blows my mind that I ever could have imagined a life where I wouldn’t be taking photos for a living.

when I was debating over transferring to SCAD, I was so afraid of making a decision I’d regret (or regretting not making the decision).

but, now i know, if I didn’t come to SCAD I’d be living a life full of “what-ifs” right now.

and as much as I’d love to still be a part of everyone’s life back at Lee, there is something to be said for knowing that you’re in the right place at the right time.