Pickles and Tomatoes

I never liked pickles until a few weeks ago. The pickle aroma was always alluring and tantalizing but no matter how many times I crunched my teeth into it, I didn’t like the consistency. I didn’t like the ridged boarder of the sliced pickle getting lost in the slushy green core. I always felt like I was fighting the sensations and confusing my taste buds. It wasn’t appetizing to sink my teeth into it. I’d buy the cheeseburger and alienate the pickles next to the soggy slab of tomatoes. That too, by the way, wasn’t appreciated up until a few weeks ago.

I still get lost in my thinking. In my adjusting and often times when I had all things figured out—changed and altered to a new beginning—the past always seemed to creep up and I have yet to figure out if I’m back tracking.

I use to image myself on this mountain and on a perfectly good bicycle. The chains were greased to a smooth cycle, the wheels smelled of fresh rubber, and every glimmer of metal was spotless. I would see myself attempting to ride with determination even though the incline was near impossible—almost vertical. I imagined the wheels spinning with an intense joy, pleasure, yet somehow cynical. That my knees would press down the petal and up in a perfect Ferris wheel motion. I’d be hunched over the bars with an earnests face. Sometimes my eyes scream with willpower, other times they’d melt with defeat because I wouldn’t be going anywhere but stationary.

I wanted to prove them wrong. I wanted someone to understand me—to tell me things would be alright but the ones I held dear slipped away. I not only became stationary but solitary in my efforts.

Within two months I found out what losing trust was like—all over again. I found out what broken hearts were made of. I found out what broken friendships tasted like. I found out that pillows can be tear stained.

And I didn’t like the dry salt lingering on my lips and swelling up my eyes. I didn’t like the way I looked with it—those eyes I never recognized, the eyes I knew were once mine. I didn’t like the frizz of my hair, the fried texture of ugliness. So I had it chopped away in hopes the entangled memories, the remnants of tears would vanished with split ends. But they didn’t. Not completely.

I bit into that cheeseburger. Maybe absently mindedly and forgetting my routine as I so often did. Maybe that’s why I left the pickle and the tomatoes right where they should be. Maybe I was subconsciously fed up with my routine. Maybe subconsciously I wanted to change what I felt was wrong—what caused wrong. Maybe pickles and tomatoes could answer the questions I fumbled around with.

Yet, as I bit further into my solitary mind, the deeper the wound became—at least that’s what it was like without the extra perplexities of life. That’s what it was like without the flavor of ridged slushy pickles and soggy tomatoes. At least that’s what it was like without the chopped away hair and continuous routine—the uphill battle of climbing the wrong mountain.

Some things are beautiful when left be—without being conquered such as the mountain I put myself upon. Some things, with time, look better amongst a sunset horizon full of crimson hues and ruffled lavender blotches. And sometimes, when given time to muster up the strength of empowerment and wisdom, are we then capable of rebuilding the bicycle to better accommodate the mountain of life’s obstacles.