r/letters

in my memory, i'm watching you fidget. i think you're playing with tobacco, maybe. repeating an action you made a thousand times under stress so bad your body can't cope with what your mind has made of it. you look like you're making supplies for the next run up, but it's just tobacco.

i don't recognize the motions while i'm watching it, but someone explained it to me once, so now i'm watching the memory of it and i see it for what it is. i'm having trouble keeping my breathing steady. my eyes are full of tears. it irritates you.

i miss you so much. your presence in my life is so strange. fleeting, but constant. warm, distant. steadfast, destabilizing. eternal, brief. all the contradictions pile up around me. i don't think of me, or the kids, or my friends, or anything else. i just feel that pull:

"babydoll, wait. please wait"

i remember you, i don't. i know things you taught me, i don't. i need you, you scare me. i want you, you hate me.

i can't stand the loneliness of trying to figure it out without you telling me.

my tears well up. they're falling down the sides of my face now. why do you look so much alike?

Something akin to a remarkable clarity has swept over me in the recent days.

Not a pseudorevelation of forced disdain, but one of painstaking neutrality.

In the relative scheme of society, you and I aren't the heroes.

We aren't even the Good Guys.

The way our lives have respectively unfolded has precluded the both of us from that demographic.

Not to say that we are evil, necessarily. Parts of us are. Parts of us are not.

But, I think the origin of my frustration lies in my tendency to view life from an inherently righteous perspective. A heroic epic.

A delusion, if you will. A projection onto my own conscience in order to sedate myself from the cold reality of my misdeeds. My major disconnect with reality.

I've always looked up to the Good Guy. Always idolized the path of light.

Always wanted to be a hero.

Truthfully, I think there might be more of myself that doesn't understand what that requires than I'm willing to admit.

I'm not The Hero. I'm not A Hero. I'm not even a Good Guy.

I've become so accustomed to firing neurons through the cognitive pathways associated with submoral tendencies.

I always know every single lie there is to tell. Every way I can manipulate a situation into my own, self-serving favor.

You're acutely aware of this. You know my capability. I've been more than honest with you about it.

I've always told myself that if I ever got the chance to start over with someone, I'd be unapologetically open with them about my past, about who I've been.

I never shared that part of me as something I'm proud of.

I shared it with you because I knew you'd still love me after I did.

I wonder if that candor played a role in our demise.

Though I reckon we've both fallen for a similar anxiety, to some extent.

Honestly, even if the most catastrophized rendition of your intentions I've managed to manifest throughout my nightmares is true, it wouldn't change anything.

If this was all just a manipulation.

If our relationship was just a product of emotional mirroring enhanced by your charisma.

If you had been just been seeking me as a trophy for your own validation.

If I was just the next, increasingly difficult intellectual challenge for you to decode and exploit.

If it all truly meant nothing to you.

I would still hold you in the same regard. Not in a manner of disservice to myself, but a salutation to the capability of your mind.

After all, our love did originate as a connection of intellectual entities.

Though, I don't believe you concocted a grand scheme to harm and manipulate me.

If you did, then congratulations I guess. You can win now.

What I believe to be more likely though, is that two individuals possessing the moral background, and cognitive aptitude for complex manipulation came together, and found a love that was true.

When things became hard, they became defensive. They intellectualized against the worst possible scenarios the other person could possibly drag them through.

We became guarded. What was once a Home for free spirited, spiritually invigorating interactions became a ground for cognitive tactics.

Regular discussions became a series of moves, and counter-moves.

Your curiosity left the picture... Not because you lost yourself, but because you donned an intellectual armor designed to protect you from real vulnerability.

That was probably one of the most critical points of deficiency in our relationship.

I've never been incredibly coordinated. In general, but particularly with emotion.

My words weren't always accurate, but my sentiments were... generally there.

I typically knew exactly what I needed to say, but sometimes needed a little assistance decompressing it.

As a creature of precision, your curiosity is what served to bridge that gap.

There came a point in your emotional fortification where you were no longer inquisitive about my words, opting instead to deduce your own meaning within them as a defense method to eliminate any window for manipulation.

If only you knew.

If only you knew, that encapsulated within the master of deceit you'd fallen in love with, there was an innocent boy that loved you with the organic naivety requisite of a happily ever after.

As you loved him more, the layers of fortification melted away. He became more and more, indisputably yours, day after day. There was no longer a need for the intellectualized fortifications.

Had it continued that way, life together would've been an inevitability, if that was to your fancy.

Nothing about us can be simple though, huh?

Almost everything about us is... complex, in some manner.

Our interactions, reflections, insights...

Our relationship, if that's what you want to call it.

Even our breakup, if that's what you want to call it.

The one constant that's remained simple throughout the entirety of this is love.

I love you.

There's a remarkable, clear neutrality to that statement now that didn't previously accompany it.

A sort of indifference.

At this point, we truly have experienced the highest peaks, and the deepest crevasses in our traversal of mutually shared emotion.

I've achieved confirmation of my postulation that I will always love you.

You might be gone for good. And that's okay.

You won't haunt me. But I will remember you.

How I saw you, because you saw me. You looked at me, took me in for the person I was, and loved me anyways.

Even though I wasn't a Hero. Even though I wasn't a Good Guy.

See you around, beautiful stranger.

There's Always a Forever.

The other side would have you,

I may have skipped through,

Some steps meant for me to learn.

And my love, we can’t have that.

Perhaps I’d be smiling at my own abuse.

Or laughing at my own tragedy.

My hardship would seem like nothing.

Just stepping stones on the way.

Because that’s how I see it now.

Memories of my life are all the road,

I travelled to find my way back,

To you.