the nth hour
Season 2's first newsletter lets you freefall into the tumultuous deep waters of the unexpected feelings that arise in the midst of what should have been a serendipitous moment.
Greetings dear dreamers
Welcome to the second season of The Abandoned Dreams Collective. To those of you who’ve been with us from the start, welcome back!
I had a plan for this issue, I did.
It was a piece I’d written a few months ago that I thought would be perfect here. I even spent all of Sunday polishing it up, adding a few more heart-wrenching turns of phrase to it and preparing it to publish with photos and the like.
But I came into Monday morning and I had a problem. I couldn’t stop thinking of a couple of pages I’d written the day before I’d worked on this one. It wasn’t very long, it wasn’t very much but it was somehow perfect. In a manner befitting the theme of this entire season, I threw caution to the winds and made an unexpected decision at the nth hour. I’d put out this piece about the unexpected feelings that arise in the midst of what should have been a serendipitous moment.
The nth hour
You’re standing in front of me at a restaurant in a country far away from those either of us have called home at any point in life and telling me that its Fate that’s brought us together now again for the first time in so many years. I’m looking at you, already miles away from the business dinner I was attending before you came up to me and holding back the tears and the anguish that I know will overshadow everything if I say a single word.
I want your presence and your words to be all I need and to make it all okay. If this was a movie, here is where the credits would roll, here when the man and the woman have made it back to each other, here where you know its going to be okay. But it isn’t and your merely being here isn’t enough for me anymore. I look at your face and know still that once I knew it, it was all I ever wanted, all I would ever dream of until the end of times.
That part is still true.
But it isn’t enough.
The words stuck at the back of my throat would tell you that there’s no use citing Fate, that the actions of Fate don’t mean anything anymore. Fate did her job twice if we’re keeping count. She brought you to me that first time, picked like the first sweet strawberry of spring in a desert. She brought you to me here today in a place neither of us (except me in my wildest dreams) would have imagined.
I didn’t need Fate for this this time around.
I needed you.
We would never have needed Fate for this if you had known it, acknowledged it and fought for it. You know how to find me. You always have. The path to me has always been clear and bright if you paid attention enough to notice the pearls of information I rolled your way. Before this moment you had so many opportunities to come to me, Even if you couldn’t have when the world changed, you could have tried when the world too started trying to change back. Just like Fate, I did my job twice. You remember both those times I held my hand out to you and tried to bring you towards me? Today marks exactly two years since that first time, funny isn't it? Both times you shrank back when you could have come forward.
I can’t be with someone who lets life happen to them when they had every chance to take it by the reins. I can’t be with someone who does not harness the courage to feel and to yearn for something and to go after that something in a foolhardy fashion. I can’t be with someone who only knows it when its Fate and not a moment before.
I need to be with someone who’s going to let the life force fill them up enough to fight and do the crazy cringey things. That’s why, standing in front of you in a restaurant made so so beautiful by your very presence, in a country far away from home, thinking about all the other things you could have said instead and hoping they’re in there somewhere if you can only look deep inside, I shake my head, avert my eyes and choose not to say a word.
Abandoned on the interwebs
If you’re still reading (ily), I’d like to share my plans for this season with you.
You know that rare rare feeling when you listen to someone talk or read their writing and you just want more? You’ve felt that connection on that one thing so you want to know where that comes from and tell everyone else you’ve ever felt that connection with about it. You want to read what they read, listen to what they listen, shout into the void so they can listen to your voice, however faint? Even as I search for and curate writings specifically for this newsletter, I continue consuming essays, music, books that blow me away. I am adding a new section to the newsletter for all the things I discovered when I was left to my own devices across the internet. I’m going to try to keep it on theme to that week’s piece but we’ll see what strikes my fancy. I hope the pieces I recommend on Abandoned on the interwebs fill you with that same mixture of rapture, urgency and inspiration that they did me when I stumbled across them
On love and croissants - There was something about her writing in this piece that makes you feel like you have your head in someone’s lap and your head is being gently stroked while This Love plays faintly in the background. I want to say that reading this piece (and also generally growing in life and all that good stuff) drove the kind of thinking that led to me writing the essay you read up there. Read it to see why having someone fall for you is like choosing croissants
The Midnight Library - It seems like everyone is talking about multiverses these days. I recommend this to you not just because of that premise. This story harkens back to my piece for the last season and shows you different versions of the same life. I won’t give anything away but one of the messages from the book that stayed with me was the importance of going through the hard, messy, uncomfortable bits before its real, before you feel like you’ve earned it.
Before I leave you to dream..
I have a lot of plans for this newsletter. I’ve been (slowly) documenting the process of building it on LinkedIn. In my first two posts I’ve given a background on my previous experiences with starting blogs and an explainer into the creative non-fiction writing landscape.
With the aim to continue growing this newsletter, I’ve set up a page where you can contribute monetarily: Ko-fi.com/theabandoneddreamscollective
I plan to use the contributions to grow the newsletter in the following ways:
Increase readership - Promotion on other aligned newsletters and social media platforms via paid advertisements.
Growing writing pipeline and optimize submission management - subscribing to a paid platform like Submittable will help me reach out to more writers and improve the process of evaluating and tracking submissions.
Compensation of writers - I believe that art is work and deserves compensation and I really want to pay all writers who trust me with their work but I can’t do that unless consumers of the art see that value in it too.
I hope you consider contributing to this mission.
That’s all for this week
I look forward to seeing you again next week with a new story.
Much love and many dreams
Nirmitee
The Abandoned Dreams Collective
this is sooo beautiful <3
Good post