The sky was very blue today. Shining light over the horizon as the sun rose red misty rapture. I walked slowly down the slabs of concrete on a journey much travelled — the first building to house a career, the green grass of picnics with old friendship, authoritarian buildings of Disneyland experiences, previous pubs of future headaches. The delicate details of perceived choice. In my self-professed existential belief system, I have perhaps succumbed like many scientists to decide (or not?) that free will does not exist, with the complexities of neuropathways, of light and more poignantly, of darkness. In one split second the wash of wave like memory shoots into the brain, the heart, the gut, the throat. Quivering legs, buzzing forehead. These memories are love and hurt, hope and melancholy, peace and panic.
I’m finally ready to write about you — in ethereal metaphoric Kafka-like meaningless English linguistic only, but today, the beauty of a perfect moment looking up at the sky, an aeroplane passing high in the sky over the city on a perfect sunshine summer evening, as laughter and playfulness surrounded me, you caught up with me. The memories of the past and their correlation to you felt physical.
A year since we got the all clear. A year since you called me saying you thought something else was wrong. A year since you broke one of the final pieces of my heart.
So here goes nothing…
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I remind myself of you. It’s agonising torture, looking in the mirror to see a person looking back at you that you resent and love concurrently. I tell myself I’d rather have my fingers blocked in a door for a week than feel this forever. Fractured soul, unable to look myself in the eye; instead picking at skin, at every single flaw. The voice activates — “you are disgusting”. And yet, you’d tell yourself that too, that you’re never good enough. She is never good enough. I know you would. The torture continues — how alike we really are and Annie hates myself even more for it.
I looked deep into a photo the other day — a simple informal media moment captured on a chat of my reflection unawares to the lens on my fragmented skin. I looked on myself with such intimate detail; the nose growing like yours did, the angular chin, thin lipped introversion, nervous energy. Gut activated; the self-punch was pretty monumental. There you were again, a reminder of how close we are and yet how far.
You’ve been fully gone for nearly two years now. But perhaps you were never really there. Crying up the stairs when he didn’t come home to find a way to vocalise an inner fear that to this day you will never express, no matter how hard we try. You tell us “I’ve done something really wrong” but can’t tell us why. I tell you the only thing wrong is not telling us. The irony being my- childhood incessant letter writing to find a way to tell you my inner fears. Instead putting a plaster on a unbeaten knee for love, for hurt — I did wrong too. The resentment of prodigal moments with questions of what really was the difference still ringing in my ears. Losing my hero to your madness of hacking and pulling until there is nothing left. Hair couldn’t be more beautiful and more fragile to me; I desire and despise every inch of it.
Maybe I’ve never really been here either. The still, peaceful moment of seeing the world buzz around me yet looking on it as if captured on film in slow motion captured a memory of so many others where I looked on the moment I was in. Watching the beautiful souls around me in true spontaneous bliss of being content in that moment, for that moment. Instead I watched on, listening to my own inner narrative of wondering, questioning.
Perhaps that is the definition of true loneliness; to be inside the moment and yet so outside of it.
I’m writing you now, just like all of the ones before, because I can’t find the words. Language is meaningless beyond the depths of unidentifiable emotion running through my veins. But it appears the only way to get close to you; the thwarted connection between us. I seek it beyond comprehension, a blurriness and flurry of energy as I hunt for the word that will pinpoint the expression of how critical that is to my make-up. Yet I push further away to protect from any connection that could hurt more than being with you and yet so outside you. The wound cut into fibre the day you were conceived. A shell of thousands into one, painful moment of humanity that binds and relinquishes us. I wish for nothing more than a bond as close as our physical one but instead it is a boomerang of maybes that never quite come back home.
I question whether I want you back and stop myself as I realise back is so poignant when it was never really there. Why did I seek something I never had, never knew, never perhaps needed to allow. If only to allow it for myself. Self-acceptance, not self-love, they cry. I only want love. Acceptance means something is wrong, imperfect, broken. I want it so much from you there is no reasoning for finding inside of me. For if we are one and the same by genes and connected tissue.
We are but tiny specks of light and yours has dwindled to its final hours but the hand of the clock has slowed, waiting for you to stop, start, continue. Coming to a halt when you fancy it, and holding back the hours of our lives until you do.
I pray to that sunshine state that you will find what you are looking for. Perhaps in time I’ll find mine too.
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