written on 04-06-2006, read, re-read, agonized over, almost sent, saved, deleted from mail, returned to mail, meditated upon, removed from mail and finally placed here… a pebble in the abyss on 04-06-2007.
i never understood just how conflicted i was until i met you. i could never see how the self-loathing i felt kept me from healing until i saw how it kept you from it. i never realized how impossible it was for anyone to help me through it until i saw how impossible it was for you to let anyone help you.
i think i loved you most for being just like me. ironic, i know.
i remember how you once told me that you didn’t want to get too close to me because you felt the kindness i held should never be taken from the world. as if you could take it. as if the most precious gift you could give was anything other than to just let me give. you never did understand. or maybe you did, and you just couldn’t handle someone caring about you even when you were cruel. regardless.
as if i’ll ever know. nothing more than guesses here. forever and ever, amen. i don’t know why it was so hard for you to just say whatever. as if, after all the hurtful things said and done, there could possibly be something of honesty that would be unacceptable.
how could you ever think so when all of this was accepted? no. i’ll never understand.
i’m letting you go, you know. it feels like ropeburn, though. smokey rivulet of regret and anger through the middle of me. i don’t suppose you’ll understand that. easier to just label. it’s ok. i understand even as i will never understand.
i don’t suppose you’ll understand that. which would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
sometimes i think you choose this because it’s safer than the unknown of doing anything else. that, for all your years long weeping for someone to pierce that cloak of invisibility, you’re not willing to give it up. locked in chrysallis. stasis. not this life, right? yes. i know. it’s ok.
i wonder if you will hear the difference in this. i don’t suppose it matters outside of curiosity. actually, i suppose you’ll not make it past the first paragraph before the turtling kicks in. that’s ok, too. this isn’t about ‘getting through’. i can’t.
it’s just about the need to say it. i wish i didn’t need to, really. part of my own puzzle. not your place to figure it out. not even your place to take it. yes, i know that, too. doesn’t help. i am sorry for that, even as i cannot be anything more than sorry.
the thing that makes it hard here is that i see too much. i can see your revulsion and your regret. just like i can see your perfection and your perfidy. and of course, my own. facets, you know. reflections and intersections and the impossibility of the vanishing point.
you won’t hear this or believe it, of course… but it was never about ‘having’ or ‘owning’ or ‘controlling’. not here. hah. not hear. sigh.
knot. gnot.
i don’t think of you all the time. you’re like a dream. you fade in and out. but i can’t shake you. i have tried. the best i can manage is the same thing i’ve always done… separate, segregate, and struggle.
i don’t know why. but i know why. and i couldn’t possibly explain it. it would be too easy for it to be insanity. i’m not that lucky.
i wrote some time ago that i was going to make myself remember the absolute worst of you so i could stop remembering the best of you. that isn’t going to work. it just doesn’t work. i think i’m just stuck with remembering you. blessing and curse. flowers and garbage. suchness. suadade.
i never knew you even as i knew you full. i miss the things i never knew even as i am ill for the things i knew and knew not. that’s the gordian knot of it all, of course. it tastes the same. sometimes.
i’m working on trying to figure out whatever this connection is. so i can figure out how to forgive whatever debt you owe me or whatever debt i owe you so it may be undone. i couldn’t possibly care less if i hang on hooks until the breath after infinity. i just want to figure out how to sever this so you don’t.
whatever in the multiverse you ever owed me, it’s forgiven. utterly. whatever you’re due to endure or suffer by me, may it be mine to bear. if i manage nothing else in this life, if i only manage that, it is enough.
until then, i am sorry and in every way, needed or not, regardless the labels or judgements here… or there… forgiveness. to you. to me. to him. to all.
if i actually work up the courage to send this, i’ll be surprised. at this moment, i’m thinking of simply keeping it to meditate on and maybe next year, burn it as incense and offering to whatever/wherever/whomever.
maybe we’ll all be blessed and the simple act of putting it on ‘paper’ will be enough.
i have to laugh at that. optimism to the end. except there is no end.
sigh.
om benza sattva hung.