I think – A goodbye
'between heartache and guilt, the only heartache can heal'
Communicating with you is like breathing. I think I prefer the idea of taking a break over a complete termination, however I also think I am mentally ill. We both likely wish for some space. When I offered to put on my hat of wisdom and you readily accepted the idea would have been opportune. No doubt we are both in alignment with wanting to love our significants and our God and one another. But a healthy fear of losing everything, we both know we need some distance. Even if communicating with you is like breathing.
I think she loves you and her father. And I think if anyone could be liberal-minded enough to think what is between us is manageable, she would be. If she is worried, you and I should be too. And clearly you are, otherwise you wouldn't have gone to her for advice. If I had a daughter or a son, could I have that confidence and trust in them? I thought of asking my mother for advice, but found she had enough burden on her without needing to carry part of mine too.
I think I wish I had someone to talk to. I've lost whatever trust I had in my colleagues here. Their words of concern feel empty and vacuous. Though kind in intent, I know some have outright disgust at my actions, confirming a longtime, low-key seething toward yours truly. One man keeps talking to me the way we talk to those who have been expelled.
I think that if I approached a friend they would say what they've said already, “I sympathize, talk to the older men”. No respite or support there. Besides, if I have learned one thing in my circle of friends it is this: they do not have time for my outpourings nor the torrents of my heart. They are men busy with the nature of their lives and fighting their own demons. This is why I turn to my books and my words. Those quiet companions never betray me, or let me down or judge me or make me feel worthless. They care about my every whim. So faithful, these. They care... don't they? Constructs of the mind, I suppose.
I think caring for me too are my old colleagues whom I keep in bottles in the high cabinet. Like genies waiting to be set free to make my every wish come true. And like those mythic creatures, their wish fulfillment only lasts until the sun rises. Patient demons, these.
I think the one person I should be able to trust and turn to for support isn't a resource because while able to forgive all but the most egregious errors committed by nearly anyone else, an iron will leaks out when it comes to me. Compassion becomes demand, and solace, support and embrace become wounds that need their own healing. Too much energy into jealousy and it consumes the ability to make me feel loved. It is a great sadness to me that my older friends tell me to turn there for support and honesty. My honesty in this has brought me NOTHING but heartache. Some secrets are best kept to oneself.
I think those many weeks on the couch and the floor (it's better for my back) combined with having learned to sleep on the edge of the bed (a practice I had to learn many years go) and perfecting the skill of knowing when I need to walk on eggshells have precluded any ability to ever be truly honest again. I wish I had known that I was taking on a partner who could never truly open up to me, nor accept all of me. But, how can someone barely out of childhood understand that far in the future together, after a half-a century, the adonis would be incapable of meeting wild passions and unwilling to walk in the garden of imagination? How? It does not matter. And my faithfulness is not predicated on the ability to do so.
I think that deciding in my youth on the policy of truth has not served me well in this endeavor. Though, that is no doubt an emotionally charged feeling. My prayer is that in the long run, I won't regret it. And I won't. Eventually. This, I trust.
I think if I had never opened up about my feelings, I could keep this secret and play the game of friendship. A game I got so good at I had myself convinced that I was stable. For years. And all that friendship required was knowledge of your safety and care for and the occasional infusion of your energy. But piercing that veil has made me a... a... poet, a writer, sometimes even a monster.
I think that I really only had one decision in this and I made that on a fall morning many years ago. I think something changed in me that day and no amount of will, love, desire, want, reading, sleeping, running, painting, writing, screaming, crying, praying... nothing will change that. Except maybe patience.
I think that the cost of my actions and feelings will follow me for years.
I think I feel alone in this.
I think I am a needy person who wants validation and even when he gets it, doesn't have enough self-love to accept it as truth. Except with you. For some reason when you say I am good, I am worthy, I am talented, I am... I believe it. This, my dear friend, is your superpower. Those beautiful souls that brought you into this world and crafted you into the entity that would become who you are made a person that can make others believe in themselves.
Thank you for that. I will carry it with me always.
I think... of you. First thing in the morning, last thing at night and very much all day long. And nothing seems capable of stopping me. Like a drug coursing through me, giving me superhuman strength of will and mental acuity while simultaneously helping me reason that this is all perfectly fine and acceptable. I travel through time with you, and imagine conversations with you and wonder what your opinion would be on this matter or that. The possibilities... the possibilities, indeed.
I think I want to write, draw, and paint about you—to have an art show or publish a book and see you angry and embarrassed that I’ve focused so much attention on you. I think you find yourself in everything I write because, one way or another, the muse is woven into those fibers
I think that I waffle on my honesty with you because if I was as honest as I could be, I know it would only make this harder for you. I know that you have a life and a love and that you are fighting duality in you because I am too. As much as I want to embrace you and hold you as inspiration like those great writers, poets and painters of antiquity whom all had their muses and mistresses... you and I have something more. We have a component that those men and women never imagined: a relationship with a higher being and power. That comes with expectations. That comes with obligation.
I think that the Director has told us what will make us happy. We believe this. We NEED this happiness. This wholeness, support, wonder... love. To be loved and feel loved, wholly and completely. He has promised us this. And it comes in small measures and doses now like it did this week when we sang together. And maybe, like me, tears welled in your eyes and streamed down your face as you anticipated being in a better world and feeling in a greater a more incomprehensible measure what you feel with me. And maybe when the blind woman removed her glasses, you spilled tears again because you bear the weight of a mental illness that prevents you from feeling whole. Even though you can see color and light splendor, other parts of you are blind. So you can sympathize and empathize with the blind, the crippled, and the mentally ill being restored. Because, you hope you will be too.
I think I had a dream wherein I grew a second heart, but in my dream I am told I cannot HAVE two hearts and so I must give one away. And you are there, and I give that heart to you and you accept it readily because your own heart is missing or you have a place to store it. But then when I have given it way, I am devastated to learn I had not grow a second heart. When I look, I see I have an empty place where my own heart was.
I think that between heartache and guilt, the only thing that can heal is heartache. Doing the right thing because it is the right thing and letting our hearts catch up is the best way to live a long and satisfying life. Since 1994 and 1987 you and I have done this over and over. Not perfectly, but passably well enough that our creator still finds you and I in his favor. Though we may not know why, he is greater than either of our hearts. He is patient because he knows about people like us. We are nothing special, you know? This circumstance, though it feels like a new construct, a new sun in creation. Nothing has befallen us that is not common to all men. Even though every star believe itself to be the center of its own universe.
I think our Maker is patient because in spite of the VERY powerful tie between the two of us, we have not stepped over the bounds of his law. Pushed against his principles: MOST CERTAINLY. But surely our God has love for two people that in spite of feeling incomplete with the two humans whom they expected to make them whole their entire lives managed to only be friends and not a nuclear explosion and then a billboard for what NOT to do.
I think that your message 'I thought of you at the museum yesterday' came at a suspicious time. Not that your message bore ANY ill will. But it was the first time I'd been alone since I decided to clear my conscience on that summer day. I can't get it out of my head... was that a coincidence or did the two of us get manipulated somehow by unseen forces?
I think it curious that last night as you waited for my reply to your request for my thoughts on the advice you received, I sat AGAIN before my counsel of older men while they read a report on my actions and their handling of matters. This embarrassment they would all later sign and submit to headquarters. SUCH is the 'privilege' of being in the roles I play. Pray you never get that treatment. Of course, the easy solve there is: don't do anything wrong. But, easier said than done.
I think I wish I could bottle the nervous energy from the early weeks of fall when every word I typed felt like a spark to the gasoline of my mind and I feared a conflagration with each press of 'send'. And the panics I would fly into when a response was delayed, and I would start thinking I had created some kind of conflict or forrest fire or bomb. That would turn into an effort to trepidatiously wait to respond so that I didn't slip back into the old habit of communicating all day every day. Until the effort became a practiced resistance that I know in time will wear away.
I think that I love you. You are the sister I wish I had my whole life. Troubled and imperfect in some aspects, but so full of life and love and knowledge and the universe that everything has the possibility of being wonderful. Tremulous and tender but also ribald and tenacious. A LOVER of the maker, your FINEST and most endearing quality. Your TRUE heart knows this, though he may not always know how to express it. I want to be, and WILL always be your brother. With enough work we will have that privilege forever.
I think our conversations will become an albatross, an anathema to our long-term happiness and peace in your household and mine. And the LAST thing I want in this world or the next, is to hinder, hurt or otherwise anyone back.
I think heroes give; villains take. But the longer we exchange, the more I wrestle Mr Hyde—no fault of yours, that lies in me. Love cannot exist without loyalty. I am learning in my middle years, the value of discipline and self-denial.
I think if I could go back to that winter day in 1996 while we wait for Winston to take the stage and you asked to feel the calluses on my weathered hands, I would do all of this again. Though certainly I would avoid some landmines along the way.
I think I will write volumes about life, the universe and everything and that regardless of circumstance or feelings, I will always have the ability to create. What a gift from Jehovah, to have a place to direct those energies!
I think too much. I need to get busy doing. I will continue to publish. Feel free to to visit without the overhead of my knowing one way or another. Or not. The shortest distance between heartbreak and healing is ignorance. I'll let you decide that.
I think your advisor is right. I'm no fan of blocking, preferring instead leave the door unlocked and trust I won't walk through it. But, that is me. Whatever you choose, I will respect you, your household and your decision by leaving you in peace. And if you find in a moment of weakness you do share a thought or a piece of music, I will not respond.
I thank you. For your love and attention. Your compassion, your patience and even your anger. Know that wherever you go, even if a ten ton truck should kill the one or both of us, you will always be in my heart. You will always be in my thoughts. You will always be in my prayers.
A goodby letter to a longtime friend.
Discuss...
Thanks for reading and sharing my beautiful lie.
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