#dear jb

i had the dream again. with the long twisted corridors and tiny goblin men. the dream where i always end up half-awake by the middle and there's a little man standing at the foot of my bed with a spear pointed at my face and a hand hovering above my leg. i try my best not to move -- i don't want it touching me -- but also can't move my head or neck to get a better angle to look at him. he just stands there. and hovers. and eventually my leg or his hand moves and touches the other and there's a flinch as he completes the contact and i'm just housing shock in my body.

i had the dream again. yanno, the not-quite hallways and the not-quite people and the not-quite but evidently, completely, sleep paralysis. i had the dream again and i woke up -- actually woke up -- filled with such panic that the fact i didn't call you impressed me.

i had the dream again. and processed the dream again. and processed having to process the dream again.

i had the dream again and, for once, i didn't call you.

(and of course i remembered you after, as what else would this be for, but the fact of the matter is that the remembering happened After, not During; it's still a win in my book.)

j & j,

it's a battle to not pick up the phone and call you. every single day. i dial, it rings. and rings and rings. depending on which of you i choose, the ringing never stops or it reaches a voicemail with a copout greeting meant to trick those unaware.

"hello? uh-huh? uh-huh [beep]"

i think i prefer the voicemail. it's from seventh grade, apparently, and then you could never figure out how to fix it (something about your voicemail box being so busted that you can't even listen to the messages), but it is still your voice and dear god i sound so fucking desperate, don't i?

i saw you both the saturday before halloween. we haven't spoken since. neither of you are good texters. you often fail to text back at all. when you do, i can never read your tone. so i call, because i know you won't — i go for walks around my neighbourhood and i always pass His house, so i call to fill up the silence and drown out the anxiety — and you never answer. if you do, it's to say you're busy. it's to say you'll call me back. you never do.

you say it's because so much has been going on lately. it's taking everything within me to believe that. because when i saw you in person, it was good. for the most part. i don't get to see people in person as much anymore so it was like trying to relearn how to speak. but as soon as i breached that bump we were on a steady, stable roll. but then i go home and we are stuck with unread texts and unanswered phone calls.

i want to so desperately believe i am being paranoid again. that it isn't true, the things my mind says about you not wanting to be my friend. but it has been months of this. of me calling. of you not answering. of being too anxious to really text because i need the deep talks before i can go into anything light. of you not bothering to text at all. i want to so desperately believe i am being paranoid again but i think anymore dismissals of the facts would be delusion. i know deeply that that is worse.

i wrote before, addressed to one of you, that i think it was time i left the woods. at the time i was upset. caught up in the throes of what i once thought was just paranoia. deeply rooted doubt. now, i think it is time to accept the distance and to pull away. because lingering in this directionless liminal space isn't healthy. i offer to talk about it and determine boundaries and see how we can go forward with this and you give me silence.

by now the silence should be answer enough.

still, i find myself going for short jaunts about the neighbour. pulling up your contacts and deciding to call. even when i know i will be met with nothing. because calling out and receiving no answer is somehow better than the inevitable silence that will stretch if i don't try.

one day i will let our silence rest. decide to call up a different friend.

i hope that day is soon.

josh,

i think i've gotten so good at playing a background character in other people's stories that i forgot how to be the main character in my own.

i told you in bare bones details about the solo dnd campaign i'm trying to run through for myself. zerrakas, the tiefling fighter who's seen so much war that he chooses the road and the mercenary life instead of being at home with his once wife and two children. hexxus, the wood elf ranger raised by wolves in a nondescript forest, living in the shadows and on the edge of the world's periphery. aaliyah, the human cleric abandoned by her church the moment they caught wind of her necromancy. celine, the high elf bards who's weapons of choice are her honeyed or barbed words depending on the evening; who carries a lute and a pan flute and a well of magic that she only taps into when she has to make a retreat.

celine's my favourite. i think about her and think that that's who i want to be. a reserved person who doesn't wear their emotions on their sleeve; who's quick to anger but doesn't let it boil over but rather simmers until it's cool and controlled. someone with the capacity for violence fueled by a past of anguish but refuses to brandish it as the weapon it could be. a little slick and a little sly, someone who meditates on their options before making their choice. someone a little predictable yet hard to read in an endearing way. someone who knows what people want but, more importantly, what people need. someone beautiful and poised; flawed but not in a surface level way.

i crafted celine and poured all of myself into her, into her party — whatever there was to pour anyway. all that i am, all that i have: a storyteller; a musician; someone who dons a different name every few months because that is what's safer. no permanent residence in an identity, or bridging connections that eventually fizzle out. in the end, celine and i always end up alone. collect the fruits of our labour after a long night and go home to an empty feeling house, an indisputably empty bed.

i crafted celine in the hopes that i could give her a better story than my own. to help her shed the things i couldn't; to help her break through the walls i never will. i crafted her a flawed found family that could establish ties that would never break. i crafted her someone who could love and protect her unconditionally. i crafted her with anguish and trauma and flaws that she will never be able to throw away but could build around and alongside of.

i am not good at crafting a main character, however. no matter what i write or the encounters i build, celine and her party remain in the background. the charlatan you see at the gambling tables. the mercenary that sits alone in the corner. the scorned acolyte with no real past. the wanderer who resides in the woods where no one goes. i hoped to write out a life i would never have and not only failed but also damned them away from the foreground.

i think i've gotten so good at playing a background character in other people's stories that i forgot how to be anything else.

i don't think i can be anything else.

i think it is time to close my chapter in the woods. with you. find a different story to exist as flavour text in. if i can take anything from celine, i can take this shedding of an unfruitful past and of painful connections. to instead look forward and never glance back; to cease clinging to the things and people that were never mine to begin with.

i am but a bucket after all. to be filled with things then emptied out again. a bucket is to be damned to the background, no? no matter the story.

i love you. thank you for the best main character i've ever played background to.

i do not have the wherewithal to make this sound pretty. i do not have the energy to conjure up metaphors and similes. i feel trapped in the prison that is my skin and i want to be rid of it.

i want to crumble. fall to my knees and let them crack against the concrete. rest my head on your thigh while your hand rests in my hair and i want you to turn my brain off. not in a sexual way. i want you to take my autonomy for then at least it feels like a choice. not a sudden and visceral loss of control.

i want to smother this feeling into submission. this feeling where i'm not really feeling, where i've become disconnected and floaty but still so heavy and tense in my skin. sometimes i think i'm dissociating but i'm never really sure. the outside world turns itself off. i'm aware but cannot tune back in. it doesn't feel important to tune back in. all of my awareness shift inward and suddenly i am desperate to claw myself out of my skin until i am rid of bumps, blood and breath.

everything i try makes it worse. a temporary reprieve that then makes everything hit so much harder, sharper. worse. i drink. i eat. i smoke up. i take my stupid prescription. i shower. i sleep. i stay up. i read, i write, i walk.

i feel like i did when i ODed. lethargic. heavy. my mind running a mile a minute and unable to latch on to any single thing. sleeping to get rid of the sensation. waking up and not knowing if i'm bothered because the feeling's still there or because i managed to wake up at all.

i don't know what i expect anyone to do about it. like letting someone enable my cycle of self-destructive behaviour by making me submit, by making me sink so low i never resurface again. i don't want to resurface again.

i am so fucking tired.

i find myself in that middle space between feeling myself drift away and wanting to give up and fall deeper into you. it is something i feel torn over, desperate to let the taut pull take over, yet reluctant to push this all on you. i don't know what i truly expect from either scenario. i do not expect you to pick up all my little pieces yet i know that if asked, you would. i do not expect you to put me back together like a convoluted puzzle yet i know that if i asked, you would. it is your nature to nurture and mine to need it, your nature to be depended on and mine to depend. yours to be put together even when you feel the furthest from it and mine to monopolise on that.

i don't know if i can keep doing this to us. playing this little game of fall apart and be put back together. this game of fruitless phone calls and unanswered texts and hoping that maybe this night will be the night that it's fixed and all okay. you've been abandoned once before — cut off like nothing, abruptly, no rhyme nor reason — and i don't want to be the one to do the same. but sometimes it feels in order to stop playing these games and treading these circles and going around and around it's all I can do. i hate hurting you. i hate hurting. i hate this pain and this cycle and i hate feeling like you're my only solution when at best my betterment comes at cost of you. i hate being put before you. i hate not knowing how to put you before me. i hate my inability to be depended on, to nurture — i hate everything i am and everything you make me.

i can't keep doing this to us. to me. to you, most importantly. you are everything and i am nothing and that's how it should be. i take from you to simply be anything and my emptiness is not worth the parts of you i pull at and take on for myself.

i've lost the plot a little bit. been too scatter brained to be coherent. i am tired of taking and being reassured that it's okay for me to do. it's not okay. it'll never be okay. there's help and then there's relentless taking, and i am the latter. and you enable me. i don't want to pull away but it's what'll be better for us both in the long run, isn't it?

isn't it?

i don't know what to say anymore. i don't know what to do anymore. i'm torn between staying and going because what i want isn't what you need but it's better than the alternative.