tonight, i had a friend over, and together, we watched a movie.
but not just any movie, and not just any friend.
the friend is one who has, for the last six months, watched and listened and heard me endure love and heartache and loss and all the things that come with it.
and the movie was ‘V for Vendetta’.
it was deliberate, this process. something of a ritual, really. a moving through, and a choice to see many things, and to see all of them differently.
a choice to embrace what is, release what cannot be, and, instead of standing still, once more set my foot forward on the path.
i sit here now, my friend having just left, and i contemplate this ritual, this choice, this act. i contemplate as well the feelings experienced to watch this movie again and this time, embrace it as a statement of these things, instead of a reason to continue clinging.
it is odd, but the very scenes that once were so painful, the dialogue that most reminded me of all the hope and aspiration toward that clinging were, in this viewing, transmuted to their opposites… and i realised that, in a deep and meaningful way, the symbolism that this movie was wrapped in at the moment it was set forth as something meaningful between us was, itself, an agent of the process, transmutation… release… becoming.
i suppose that will sound bizarre to some. no matter. it is what it is, and we find meaning where we look for it.
in the theater of my mind, he was V and i was Evey, and in many ways he rescued me from a life that was dark, shadowed, and filled with fear.
he tortured me as well… though not with deliberation, rather, with pride, and his own fear… with avoidance that became rejection, and ultimately, his torture killed in me the very same thing that V killed in Evey… not as skillfully, not as knowingly, nor as motivated by intent…but the result was the same, and i think perhaps that is what really matters.
in knowing him, in suffering through knowing him, enduring love of him, and loss of that love, in fighting all reality and then, finally, accepting it and releasing both love as well as him from every inch of me, i too, have arrived at a place where a fear that has haunted me all my life can no longer reach me, can no longer smother me, can no longer as much as breathe upon me.
he has passed from my life, as dead to me in this moment as V in his scarlet carson shroud.
two nights ago, i stood before my own lever, my own train packed with explosives, its destination the parliment of the heart… and made the only choice left to me, the only choice that could possibly change what humble aspect of life lay in my hands to affect.
a choice to move through.
i watched this movie tonight, with a friend, and all these things occurred to me… but most of all, that regardless choices and time and circumstance, despite torture, despite the river of reality that runs between us and is uncrossable… despite his flaws or mine, regardless where we, as humans, set blame… his arrival in my life was a gift, a gift from the universe… a tender thing.
because of this gift, i am, in this moment, free. free in a way i would not have been had i never endured him, never known him, never had opportunity to suffer for his fears… and my own.
he has passed. parliment lies in ruins. but i am free. and while i cannot tell him these things, while he cannot ever hear them, i can still appreciate that they have happened, and i can still appreciate how his presence, for these many months, has given this to me.
i suppose it is a thing that will not be understood by anyone… but then, perhaps on some level, it may be understood by everyone… someday… which is one of many reasons that i record it here, and say to the universe the words that give honor and merit where it is due… what pitiful honor i might give for the blessing of outcomes unexpected.
thank you… thank you for the lessons, thank you for the learning, thank you for the gifts given, both deliberate and otherwise, thank you for being you.
i leave this small stone, a gem of gratitude, in the fields of memory, where it will rest undisturbed hereafter.