How have we gone this way?
How far, how unexpectedly treacherous, was this path of yours? What ill-fated road, walked on much too late at night, did you stumble about? Where did you go, why did you go? Why were your two feet planted not in my direction, not in the way we had calculated, thought precisely and ardently of, but instead a way unbeknownst to anyone other than your impulse?
Where did you go?
There are things I think about, often, head aching from the egregious trouble they bring about, really. I think about these things, these terrible longings, and I play a game with myself. I play this game called Hell and Heaven. I used to be quite a prodigious player, a meticulous savant of sorts, really. I’d win against myself everytime. See, this is how my little inane game goes: I think of these things, these terrible things, and I categorize the things into hell and heaven. It began very simply, funnily so, an amusing satiation to unrequited longing. Ruining your self-esteem, though you were unaware of my game, was a gallant fun in itself. It required effort and preciseness, see, effort and disgust, at who you were, who’d you become.
But, the trouble is, see, I used to be quite good at this particular game. I’d separate your wishes wisely, pompously, easily. It was clear; it was blatant. Right was right and wrong was wrong. Heaven was heaven and hell was hell. Always. Consistently. Faithfully.
Things have recently changed, and this terrifies me greatly. I no longer am the arrogant mastermind, the wise sorceress of morality. I am now incapable of differentiating, see. Things are no longer black and white, good god, no. Black and white no longer exist for me. I think of you, of these terrible things, and I cannot place your wishes into heaven or hell. Your heaven used to seem like my quintessential hell, but times have changed, and so have I.
I can’t separate you from me. After you found your sudden path, I got lost in the one we were supposed to travel down together. I used to think about how unfathomably idiotic, how ridiculously petty, you were, to travel down the road more-traveled, a commoner’s ground. I found it heinous, I found it repulsive. I found it of lesser worth.
But things, my friend, things- they have changed. I have changed. Your path, one which I felt so superior over, one I dismissed with a wrinkle of the nose and a raise of the brow, is no lesser than my own. This is the horribly terrifying thing: no path is better. Each is its own faults. Each is its own mess. Each path has surprise curves and complexities, obstacles, so vast and so painful they swallow the traveler whole.
Your path, I realize, is not any less than mine, not unimportant, not silly. Your path is yours. Unfortunately, we are people, see, and so, I am myself, your path must be yours alone and mine must be mine alone. I wish, I wish always, that our paths had intersected, crossed in an impeccable X, but they did not, they may never again.
How have we gone this way?
We have lived.
sofsea 