It’s easy to get lost, you know. To forget the way back home, to have been somewhere and lose it.
We talk about growing up, and the way time changes things. No one’s really surprised when they look back and realize there’s some stuff in the past that’s gone missing. Memories that can’t be recreated, thoughts and feelings that just don’t seem to happen anymore.
You know, though, don’t you? You have to, really, somewhere in there.
…
Sometimes it’s enough to feel things. It’s enough to be able to say that, yes, you want this, or no, that. Easy things. What to get for dinner, what to do tonight. When the choices are just there, and you’ve just got to pick, it’s easy.
But some things are missing. Things you have to look for, or be prepared to avoid. How do you know how you’ll feel about them, when the time comes?
That’s when you have to know. And even though knowing is hard enough, you have to know and feel.
What’ll it be like, in 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years? What will I want? What should I be doing now that would make it happen?
Really, it’s entropy’s fault. The unidirectional arrow of time. If only a little trickle could go back, and show us the lives that would lead to the life we want.
A thousand things you could do but never will, because how could you know? A thousand mistakes you’ll have to make, because it’s the only way to learn the thing that would have stopped you from making it.
…
I’ve often wondered, now and then, what it was about her. What made her special, exactly.
I wish she wasn’t, really. It’s a funny kind of irony: a bigger mistake would have been easier to wash myself clean of. If I’d just been so completely wrong about her, if there hadn’t been anything real about my feelings for her, it would be so much simpler now.
She is, though. I’ve yet to find another girl who’s really like her, and I don’t mean ‘like’ as in someone who looks or acts or whatevers her.
My whole life’s been rather poignantly defined by a massive distance between me and most other people. Trying to explain is challenging, because either you know what I’m like and you don’t need me to explain, or you don’t and you just completely lack the points of common reference to me that make easy, effective communication possible. So let’s just take that for granted, hey?
She’s like me, except she’s her instead, and we’re still different people. I have a few other friends who are also close, but only one is nearly as close as her.
It’s interesting, sociologically, because we share a few things in our background: we’re all children of expatriates with significant family issues. I imagine the expatriates thing creates a sense of difference and isolation that takes hold good and early. Family issues, well, of course that just fucks us up.
We’re all romantics who end up in or create very dysfunctional relationships. We seem to have a lot of narcissistic tendencies in common. I think we’ve all got some tendency toward manic and depressive streaks; I think she’s actually on medication for bipolar at the moment. We’re all loners to some extent.
There are big differences, as well, obviously. We’re not the same people, but it feels like we’re the same kind.
So of course it felt like love, or something like what I thought love was supposed to be. We were used to being strange, and when we were together our differences were to other people but not each other. It made a kind of sense.
Is it enough, though?
It’s painful, because I need someone like that. I need someone I can make sense to, because seeing that inevitable look of confusion, of utter incomprehension and isolation in the eyes of someone I cared about… well, it’s bad enough when it’s from a stranger. One look and you know deep in your bones you just don’t belong there, and that it’s an act, and you’ve got to lie so they don’t figure it out. But you know you’re lying.
But she’s the only girl I’ve ever met like that. And even though I don’t want her, even though I’ve tried to convince myself over and over again I’m really done, I’m never going back, it’s like we’re the same species and we’re the only ones left.
And, hey, it’s not like she’s all bad. She’s cute, we get along well as friends, she’s affectionate and caring and earnest.
But she’s not honest. And it says a lot about me, I suppose, that out of everything, good and bad, I could pick from, that ends up being the most important.
She’s earnest; she tries to say what she thinks is true, she didn’t keep secrets. She never tried to mislead me.
But honesty is really about being able to deal with the truth. With your truth, with who you are. She couldn’t be honest with herself, so what does it matter that she tried to be with me? A lie you tell to yourself repeats itself to everyone in your life.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I really don’t have anything against lying. It’s a tool, really, and how and when someone uses it says a lot about them, but I don’t object to all of it. I’m not sitting here going on about honesty in that sense.
Frankly, I wish she’d lied to me intentionally. I wish she’d done everything on purpose, and not been as much a victim of her own delusions as I was. Hate is so much more fun than pity, which feels disgusting. Hate at least has weight, and passion. If she’d done it on purpose, if she’d have a reason - then I could ask her why, and I could judge her on her response.
Instead her reason is teary eyes and I don’t know, I swear I’m not that person anymore.
…
I’m selfish. I don’t value goodness in others. I don’t trust the appearance of it, and the aspiration toward it has always seemed rooted in vanity.
I mean, what is goodness supposed to be anyway? Charity, kindness towards all? It’s the good of the many, of the faceless masses. I don’t even like most people. Why should I value seeing the people I do care about sacrificing themselves for assholes they don’t even know?
I like honesty, but not for itself. True virtue is a complex and subtle thing. More importantly, people who aspire toward it are boring. Trying to fit themselves into a box with a bunch of other people.
I hate boring people more than I hate the intentionally malicious, the vile, the cruel. People who believe things I disagree with are far closer to my heart than people who believe nothing at all.
It’s not about honesty, you understand. It’s that people who are honest with themselves can be interesting.
Anyone can be like the people they see around them, but I’ve already met that person, and it’s not real - it’s a facade, not a personality, you fucking idiot.
It’s when people start to go looking inside themselves that they get strange, that they find new things.
…
Didn’t anyone tell you? It’s just us down here, you know. We made it all up. Everything’s from someone…
And some of it’s yours, if you have the will to keep it.
But it’s easy to get lost.
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