My sunlit hours drag along, I can’t convince them to pass faster. Anemic things, poorly filled. I suspect all that bright light boils the good parts out.
And then night falls and suddenly there’s not enough time, there’s too much I want.
I should move to one of the poles when night lasts for weeks and just stare at the stars forever.
…
I don’t know if I even believe in love anymore.
For so long it was the only thing that really seemed like it was worth chasing. Like it was the only piece of magic left, the only thing better than… well, all of this.
I mean, when I thought I found it I chased it with everything. With reckless, utter abandon. I’d sacrifice anything on that altar, and I wouldn’t waste time wondering about it. Nothing else mattered - not school or my degree, not friends or family, not my self-respect or comfort or happiness. Just that electric tingle when our fingers would meet, sparking in an unstoppable reaction that would pull more and more of us in with the implacability of a black hole.
When I thought I lost it, it broke my world in two. The event still stands in the geography of my life, like a mountain range torn up from the shattering of everything I once held dear. Everything in my life is circumscribed by that context - what was before, and what’s come after.
But whatever it was then, I don’t feel it anymore.
First a memory, then a memory of a memory, and now nothing.
I played with all the dead pieces of the life we used to have. Put them back together like a puzzle, like a corpse reassembled in the mockery of a once-living person.
I think I’d want to get back together with her. If I didn’t believe in love. Or if I could find whatever I once felt.
Instead I hold this dead thing close. Not whatever mockery of love we shared, not the pang of excitement and infatuation for someone new.
Is it just a reflex - just an action repeated over and over, preserved out of simple, thoughtless momentum? Is it a fantasy too stubborn to be replaced with the truth?
It was the only answer I ever found, to that vicious question - what’s worth wanting, worth seeking, worth finding? What’s actually worth the trouble of living for?
Maybe I should admit to myself that it says something that I kept looking, when that answer’s been around forever.
…
I like the thought of having someone interested in my life, to commiserate with. I like the idea of someone I can depend on, of someone looking out for me, someone who can help out.
But I can’t stand the idea of being that person for anyone else.
The thought of intimacy makes my skin crawl.
I’ve been trying to pretend it isn’t true, but I don’t think I’m going to meet someone magical who’s going to come along and save me, make my life into what I hoped it would be, to be the reason for anything.
I’ve been trying to pretend it isn’t true, but I don’t think I’ve wanted that for a long time.
I had it. And as bad as things got, as vicious and miserable and profane as it was, as much as it wasn’t at all like what I thought it was supposed to be.
I didn’t lose it, I left it. I chose this. Whatever this is.
I don’t know if any of this is true.
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