the mystery emailer is back. but this time, i was prepared.
unable to trace the mix-master headers, instead i turned to google. seems these bits always come from public places, which is odd even as it is ugly. a short search turned up the source and this time, the differences between what was mailed to me and what was actually written are verifiable.
whoever you are, you have no power here. the things that may or may not be said as fictions or as veiled truths are not relevant to me, nor do they touch me. the effort you make to torment me fails. though i nod to the weirdness that has your effort arrive and be so parallel to my own thoughts of late, i understand better in this moment why they do so… and in an unexpected way, i can actually thank you for your ongoing bizarreness.
because of it, i finally see how to set the barrier and see it to ending.
until scant hours ago, i truly thought it would be wrong to do so. but there is a difference between cutting the loss and retaking what was given. i do not have to hold this when it is an ongoing crime to do so. and i do not have to impunge my own ethics to sever the last strand.
i begin to recognize you, for all you hide behind anonymous servers. there is only one who would undertake such pointed efforts to harm and harry. only one.
i cannot say i understand what drives you to such things. nor do i wish to know. your issues are your own, and i long ago relinquished the idea that i could ever understand them, let alone dress or tend them.
the things you think to torment me with only underscore all the stronger the difference between actions and words. it is a simple thing to mouth words and both you and he are most eloquent, but the abyss between words and actions remains and there is no bridging such a deliberate gap.
in sharing this with a friend, reading it to them and discussing it, they said to me, ‘i have never heard a song so sweet from such a vampire.’
i had a reflexive urge to deny it, even now, to defend and explain. it was a deep barb, but no longer set fully.
tender truths given by a friend who cares enough to match actions to words, and in whose words the timbre of a love each of you have but pretended to throbs. they told me i hadn’t really given up. i laughed for it, both because it was right and because it was wrong.
there is a difference between giving up the wish for transcendence and giving up the belief in connection.
the conversation swirled around these things and in it, my own admission that an ongoing belief in connection was a barb set not by either of you, but by myself. thus, all the harder to withdraw… as it is bound me to myself, and its strands are thick with meaning that supports so many things here.
but some connections are beneficial while others are only poisonous. and while i have worked for some time to accord benefit of the doubt, all this carefully crafted campaign and all this disdain and all these lies given as truths… they have been a venom, an acid, that long ago ate through all things…
… in the time since, i have held it with my hands, with my heart, and with my hope. but it has been no less angry or hungry than ever and in the eyes and words of my friend, the open sores on my hands and the hurt in my heart and the taint against pristine hope i can no longer pretend not to see.
they named you vampire. nosferatu, drinker of souls. i cannot say it is so, since both of you were ever oblivious to your preying. rather, i think back to an earlier moment, in which i named you vaettir… hungry ghosts… who cannot be other than as they are, and who, despite themselves, feed upon flesh because it is all they know how to do.
i wonder if you would be able to hear the resignation in this. the absolute lack of anger. weary, really. and relieved. finally. relieved. i do not have to hate you nor do i need consecrate or keep this tainted shard you left as if some tender gift. by its presence, you continue to pull at me, continue to eat and drain of me.
i gave you the opening in which to be tender and sustain me and as ever and always, all you can do is suck upon it, leech from it… never return to it, never give to it, never as much as think of other than your endless hunger.
i once told one of you that there is a place where no thirst may live, nor gain power. where the very air and ground are saturated and all things endlessly bloom.
one of you sent to me, under cover, this fiction in which some semblance of honor was paid to it. but even in it, still… nothing but bemoaning self and self’s need… begrudging me as unseeing and only yourself, knowing. oh arrogant one, feeder upon despairs… i do not close my eyes to see you more truly… i close my eyes to stop seeing you as you are, as you have always been… even your wishes for healing float upon the miasma of hunger. bitter tang of warped need that stings long before it lands.
with shaking hands, i run the toothed blade over this gnarled and knotted thing… this sick and pulsing rope through which you pull at me. call your serpent back to you, and keep your raven’s eye, your sharp and hungry beak, your trickster’s words. comfort yourself with the mewlings of all you might have been, might have done… i send them all back to you, archive them lovingly…. your possibilities unrealized. i am through mourning what never was, what could not be, and what you could never see.
i will use my friend’s name, for the analogy yet suits… heap the dirt of your treasured self into the coffin, nosferatu… rest you there in the night and dream your aches into your own bones. i cut the ties, give them to the fire… a more loyal friend than you ever thought to be, this too, it shall transmute.
truer words were never spoken than these — you cannot free me, i can only free myself.
i am free and no more will i know you.