Today I am mad at you again. Did you have to make your point? You were always so goddamn stubborn. I said you'd fight to the death. Today I was reading Everything is Illuminated. The last chapter I read reminds me of how LitTOC made me feel. I was always the poster child, to you, your crowned goddess, to everyone, to myself. "Love makes it all worth it". It's so simple, so bubbly, I can't even repeat it in my own head without it sounding comically trite and worn. Chris even made those cartoons. Looking back now, all I see is a caricature myself. I don't know anymore. Who or what do I have left to show for it? What was that based on? Some fucked up, emotionally manipulated subservience to a person disguised as an ideal. An ideal, I thought, wouldn't hurt you. But when you slap that ideal like a post-it note to someone's forehead, give it life, give it dreams, give it fears, it's all a minefield. The unconditional forgiveness that drove me into the ground. You were the last good thing left.
In the grass at the airport, I wish I could remember if you were crying. I was blinded by my own fears, my own tears, so goddamn selfish. If you didn't, I know it was the closest you ever got(besides that time in Nashua, when I asked of you the impossible, but this time it was pure agony, no anger, less fear). Why was it worth it? I looked over my shoulder (you crashed into the ground) without regret this time. At least we had the chance, I said. The day she popped your cherry and I laughed, did that break your heart? I'm sorry I told. You'd think if I could know anything, I could at least know myself. I can't even remember what my question is anymore.
I say on that sponge-scrubber green floor and wept over the Truth I found in every bittersweet line of LitTOC. I put my post-its there to tell you how it couldn't be. I hate the way your eyes implored me. Not our usual quiet resignation. I should have known. If you hadn't asked, I might have said yes. Is that wrong? I don't know why I couldn't love you. You faced your greatest fear for me, I now it has become mine. Because I lost you. I lose. You win. Should I have known that there was so much on the table?
We stayed up until 4AM, trying not to yell. Biting that denim comforter to abate my absolute frustration. Like a baby, like now, all I can do is stomp my feet and pound my fists to make you, to make them, understand. "I don't want to love because the day you lose the one you love seems unbearable, to impossible to handle.""But it's worth it! Don't you fucking trust me?" This goddamn sense of guilt. If I had gone, you would be black, immobile, undead. I wish we could talk it out. Our final folly:, we were to each a compass, a mirror, it was always you or me we came to when we had questions of the marrow of it all; but when you are my philosophy how can we possibly discuss this as secular? It doesn't even matter now because you are gone, gone, gone. Beat it. Repeat it. it still rings empty to my ears. I just can't wring the reality, the truth, out of any of these tears. Blackness would be better than this bitter parade of empty little light boxes displaying the faded, flickering projections of my projected, happy life. It goes on without me.
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