la brea indeed.
you know what i remember most and best of you? the way you used to pop off with complete nonsense to express things that words cannot say.
kowabonga.
like that.
how sad that this is the best thing. really. so many moments that might have been so.
i’ve spent the last weeks studiously not thinking of you. forcing it all into the back of my head to stew, simmer, boil down.
wayyyyyy back there in the back, some goofy looking pedant with nothing better to do than take every moment, every memory, and review it in the light of the things that have come from beyond the veils, where you hid and spoke what you really thought… not to me, not like a friend… but to others… snickers and pitying superiority… clustered in the corner and sniggering amongst yourselves and casting ‘knowing looks’ my way here and there, only to lean in to one another and laugh all the harder… or trade vile little cruelties.
i give them all back to you, of course. lies, all, they can hardly be the roses i thought them, can they?
an agent. a stalker. a harrasser. unstable. malicious. the picture you paint has become clearer with time, circumstance, and the nature of truth to have itself heard.
i might have thought you truthful forever. thanks to dmf, that illusion is shattered.
actually, i knew it the day i read the council chambers. i just didn’t want to admit it. i didn’t want to know.
i thought about the stupidity of thinking you truthful and sending you honesty and trust… about the project, about just trying to do a good thing… and all the while, you were sitting there with eager labels and gleeful paintbrush, looking for another place to set your calumny.
it mattered to me for a good while longer than i wanted it to. i’m kind of idealistic that way. always have been. for a good bit of time, even after dmf’s revelation, despite the ego anger and soul wounds, i still wanted to think you better than the things you did and said and spread.
you’d think as often as i’ve been around this bush, i’d be tired. but though it may look the same at the moment, this is different.
you see, this time, i understand the difference between what you could have chosen and what you did. even if i will never understand why.
why doesn’t matter. it never did. it was just my way of coping with the duplicity until i could face what it pointed to…
so i could really look at it, full face, dead on, and see it long enough to get a really good look…
for the memory album, you know…
so that when i turned away, walked away, no matter how long, no matter what, if ever i think of turning back, looking back, i will have that memory to remind me that it is imperative, utterly critical that i do not do so.
a memory of how and why, for the first time, i gave up.
hah.
there are people who would pay you to learn how to hurt me that much.
but then, you didn’t actually hurt me. you hurt some paper mache effigy that you call ‘me’.
took me a while to see that, too. took a while to remember that, regardless the loving effort you set on that painting of hideousness and horror, that isn’t me.
i wondered why i ever let your ugliness convince me it could possibly be real.
but in time, i even understood that. you see, there is part of me that remembers others who painted me with such colors. and for a long time, i did not know it was not me. because they were all i had, and because you’re supposed to be able to believe the people who brought you into the world.
so if they tell you that you’re terrible, or ugly, or pointless, or worthless, or hopeless, or horrible, or a waste… if they tell you that you’re unloveable and evil and poison and death to everything you touch… you believe them.
you believe them because you don’t know any better. but also because they’ve been around you more than anyone else. so if they say it, it must be true…. right?
it was not your ugliness that convinced me. it was the ugliness given me long ago that i had never really gotten rid of…. and that part of me still wondered about… feared, really.
you reminded me in every way of all the ugliness i had always thought i had to remember. both so i could never be it and so i could always fear being it.
i wanted to prove to you that you were wrong. but that’s impossible. people choose what they believe.
and i wanted to prove to them through you that they were wrong. which, of course, is just as misguided. even had i managed it, there’s no way to show them… they’re dead and gone.
and i wanted to prove to myself through you that you were all wrong. i felt that if i could just manage that, maybe then i could stop wondering if you were all right. about everything.
i wish it were possible to put sounds into words. i wish it were possible for you to hear the sound of this.
wind in an empty canyon. water that has moved well beyond the bridge.
the irony is… i’m none of those things and i’m every one of those things. but the difference is that all of those things that are in me, have never breathed outside of me. except through you, except through your lies.
i think that is why i was so angry. that all the things i could be, could do, and all the work that has gone into never being that, never doing that, being so devoted to being and doing anything other than that… and it didn’t even matter.
all you had to do was say it, write it, and it didn’t matter than none of it was real. you made it real for you, and for everyone you gave it to as truth. for whatever twisted, fucked up reason… you need it to be real. so you made it so, gave it as real to all around you to keep it so.
but that’s what makes this different. just because you swear it is real doesn’t make it real. it doesn’t even make it mean anything. it doesn’t have to be anything here. it doesn’t exist.
do you know, i’ve been telling myself that since august of last year and it has only been in the last week that i saw it as more than words?
history doesn’t exist. fake history cannot exist. none of this excruiating hurt has to exist.
who decides what gets to stay here? who determines how it remains? who gives it meaning? who sets the lines that demarcate experience and memory?
why did i ever give that power to you? i’m asking myself, and it is still a rhetorical question. hah.
i gave that power to you because i trusted you not to abuse it. and the only way to find you worthy of that trust was to give you the chance to misuse it.
and you know what? it turns out that it is perfectly ok that you did both. isn’t that odd. you shattered the entire universe and in the shards i found something i didn’t know was there. i’d never have found it if not for trusting you and being betrayed by you.
thank you. really. granted, a weary and very tired thank you, but sincere nonetheless.
i’ve been talking about letting history go for all my life. i’ve been talking about letting the idea of you go for well over a year. i think i’m actually doing it…. and that’s a beautiful thing.