#growing distant

Even when I'm with you

For you're not who used to be

After five years, I looked into her eyes and that girl was gone. The girl that knew me best, the one I had only ever grown fonder of over the last ten years. What peered back at me was a different woman – a woman who had been so desperate for me to never notice. It finally became clear to me why she had been so apprehensive about meeting all this time. The way she would avert her gaze, so that I could not dispel all doubt, that the girl I knew and adored was no longer standing there with me. Only a fading reminder of who I used to be. What I had been talking to over the last half a decade was a ghost of my own past – one she no longer embodied in earnest, but nonetheless kept up as a charade, so that we might keep what little we had in common tending the light at the end of the tunnel.

It had been so long that all I could remember of her were vague smudged shapes, resembling nothing more but a deteriorated and withered image of her. No new memories had formed over such a long time, I was beginning to worry it might not all be true. My eyes ate up every detail of her like a starved beast, clawing for every morsel it could get its hands on. A visage once forgotten, now renewed with little conjecture. Yet, for her, the significance of this event seemed to be yet another footnote in an already busy day.

As she turned her back on me and began talking with her acquaintances – ones that I neither knew, nor was introduced to. As she eagerly tapped away at her phone, visibly impatient, the only thought that ran through my head was to bolt. Run away from here as fast as possible. “You are nobody here anymore.”, it said. “Make this all go away.” There was no longing to match my own. No fears over missed opportunities, no dread over an ever-growing distance.

All she did was keep on typing, messaging someone she probably heard from day in and day out. Someone she had seen several times in the last week, month, year. Someone who was obviously closer to her than I would ever be from now on, and perhaps had already been so for even longer.

I could barely listen to what was being said. My mind was rushing with all manner of pained thoughts and shattered expectations, culminating in one desperate unspoken sentence: “I won’t wait another five years for this.”

And then he came, and they kissed - as if I should have known. There was all that warmth I could no longer see with my own eyes. All of this busywork that had made our chances to meet null and void was no more than an elaborate smear campaign. One orchestrated specifically to avoid the reaction I was currently taking the full brunt of. Every fibre of my body felt like death. It was almost pathetic. I had let it happen again. I had let my best friend turn me into a fool once more. All of those pleasantries, passionate exchanges, deep sincere hear-to-heart conversations were nothing more than having your cake and eating it.  I could no longer even entertain the thought of being there for her. At that moment I died and came back, as if awakening from a long dream. Unfettered by sentimentality or want, as that old version of me that had felt this before. Its tongue split in two, as it spit venom, hatred, repulsion, as it began thinking of revenge, of cruelty. My own Ahab, stabbing away from hell’s heart.

Not a word, not an expression, I broke off. No one seemed to notice.

I sat alone on a wet bench in the garden grounds, as more content individuals around me spoke colloquially to each other. My phone began buzzing, but I couldn’t bear to look at it. It could have been a call that would change my life and I still wouldn’t pick it up. All I could do is sit there, unblinking, filled with every emotion my body knew how to synthesize. Every moment we had shared, I tore to shreds. Trent Reznor understood me. Johnny Rotten understood me. The both offered solace to an aching mind with words which I was finally able to meet half-way.

I blinked twice and sat in an uncomfortable chair, surrounded by grins on all sides, in a room that was as baroque as it was large. It echoed every sound, including the ones no one else could hear. I clapped. I clapped for hours as everyone’s name was called, even her – especially her. The echoes of his claps meeting the back of my head with a deafening thud. They were having the best day of their lives and I wanted nothing to do with it. I was no longer there for her. I wasn’t there for me either. It was everyone else. I sat there until the very last person had gone and left.

I picked up my bag and left, in a rush. I dared not look behind, as if embodying some contemporary image of Orpheus on his way out of Hades. Then I looked, on purpose, so that it may all fade away to nothingness. Every step along those long winding stairs screeched as every muscle in my body followed my only desire – to get away as fast as possible. Hiding, like a rat, evading her every gaze. I walked for hours in any direction that came to mind. Parks, roads, buildings all blended in.

Another two blinks and I was leaning against a wall in a long corridor that was devoid of all life. One of those spaces that is only ever traversed - never a destination. Slowly standing became slouching, slouching became sliding, and sliding became sitting. Every piece of fabric on me was either choking me or making my own heat even greater. The only compassion I was to see that day was when a cleaning lady passed by and asked me if I was feeling well. What could I say to her? Regardless, it came out as “Oh, I’m just waiting.”

slowly at first..not even giving a hint of the distance forming b/w us.

then slowly with time..it all dissolves into the water into nothingness just leaving behind the sweetness. the sweetness of the friendship that we shared.

and if the situation becomes heated..we dissolve even more quickly drivinf us even apart.

and i think this is so preposterous.

Remember that you are worth more than what you give.

You aren't a communal object to give and give until empty.

You are not living water.

Do not pretend your water is endless.

For someday you will need a drink and have no water your yourself.

Giving is not the only reason people love you.

I love you for the way you smile when Chris says a dad joke.

I love you for the clips you send us of you spinning in your sewed circle skits.

I love you for the way you fall in love with universes of paper and ink.

You are not the body you inhabit.

You are not the people you please.

You are radient for many reasons.

I know giving makes you feel whole, I do the same.

It is not selfish to support yourself.

Sometimes friends will drift away, whether it be for a week or forever.

That's okay.

Its scary and hurts but it's part of growing up.

Be happy for the memories you shared.

But don't let their distance make you feel like you are less.

Be kind to yourself, V.

You will do great, kiddo.

Knock em' dead.

wanted you to be, but to