the title is self-explanatory, really. i will not be naming the ‘you’ to whom i refer. it is, as it always is, evident to those who know and pointless to those who do not.
(recording available: inmythoughts )
the reason i am thinking of you tonight is that i had a conversation with a friend and they were telling me of a rough and rocky experience that hollowed them and made room for life. it made me think of you because in a good many ways, that is precisely what you did for me. though i suppose you do not know it, and i didn’t really know it myself until long after you had passed out of the frame.
it is interesting to me how there are certain people you encounter in life who affect you long after the moment of experiencing them. and it is interesting to me how the nature of that experience or the perspective on it will shift and change with time. i think the muting of memory and the nature of human subjectivity are gifts; they soften the edges of things and make them helpful… eventually.
i am sometimes surprised at the manner in which old angers turn to nothingness and old enjoyments turn to nostalgia. i don’t think either are really possible until the emotions settle and time has its careful way with it all. the thing i find most interesting of all is the manner in which the ripples of all the stones settle and soothe things that one would never think it possible for them to reach or touch.
i remember telling someone that all ripples eventually reach the shore. i think about that and smile, because it means ignorant wisdom is still wisdom, and because being able to find a thing true when you only hoped it would be so seems a tender thing.
my friend did not exactly say that they thought they had been hollowed for life to fill, but it seemed obvious in how they spoke of growing content and finding helpful things rather than just a bunch of ugly glass shards or painful memories. it was then that i realized — the only reason i saw it this way was because of my own hollowing and the process of coming to peace with it.
i can remember when i would ache for days on end because something reminded me of you. i can remember when i worked harder not to think of you than almost anything. i can remember how angry and sad i felt when i could not manage it — because it seemed somehow wrong that i should be so unable when it seemed so simple for you — the silence told of your success and competence and it made me feel such a failure, like something was terribly wrong with me for not being able to manage it.
i’m glad to be able to write that in the past tense. glad as well to be able to talk about it with a equanimity that i honestly did not think i would find.
i remember telling yet another friend that i was glad i met them now rather than earlier. that, had i met them earlier, we likely would not be friends because i was not the person i am in this moment. it has a bittersweet taste, these kinds of things. i mention it because it occurs to me that i am becoming a better person, and there are a number of things on the list of ‘betterment’ that would not be here were it not for having encountered you and experienced things just as they were.
to the degree this is true, i owe you gratitude for being precisely as you were. the people who know me here, now, gain good things as the result of the work that was undertaken because of experiencing you. there was a time when i would have been very reluctant indeed to admit it. i consider this and am at once sad and happy. mostly happy.
i never expect to think of you anymore, so i am always surprised when i do. i do not cringe from it like i used to, nor do i try to bury and deny it. instead, i shake my head at myself and tell myself it is alright to let you have a moment of my thoughts.
on these rare occasions, i tend to think of you as a book. a closed book. the analogy works for me…. the notion of trying to add pages to a closed book keeps me honest with myself. while i will admit that, now and then, something still reminds me that the book sits upon the shelf of my mind, it’s not a story i need to re-read — i know how it began and i know how it ended.
in moments like this, i loan it out to people like my friend as evidence that i identify with and understand what they are talking about… and for this purpose, it serves well. which is, i suppose, why it is no longer odd that you are in my thoughts. you have finally become history, immutable and unchanging, neutral and safe.
i must admit, that is a very positive thing.