It’s been a long time since I last wrote anything to do with what happened, anything to do with you. Sometimes I stayed my hand because I felt it was for the best. Most times, it was because at the time there was nothing left to say.
Eventually there’s always something more to say, as each day brings a further shifted perspective, and a glimpse in different directions.
It’s strange, how most days, these days, the sight of your name [or hers] no longer jars me, no longer pains me, and in fact, leaves not even a feeling of emptiness or hollowness—there is simply no reaction at all. And some days, it does. Some days it makes me sad, some days it makes me happy—for you and for her, in a strange way, and even somewhat for myself, and some days it still makes me angry.
Perhaps it will always be this way. I think it will. I just think the neutral days will continue to outnumber the days where it matters, exponentially. The same goes for my curiosity, too.
And I think some day, the memory of the pain will barely even be a memory, and I will not truly understand what I went through or what I am still going through, any more than I can truly understand or remember the pains of the past—all I remember of them is the way I described them, the way I thought about them, the words I sought so carefully and desperately to try and pin down into words what I was feeling, if only to solidify and thus cast it away some how—or perhaps allow someone else [even a future self], vision into what I was feeling.
It is for those reasons, I suppose, that I’m writing again.
This is not a turning point, nor a fork in the road. It is not notable nor memorable, it is no milestone.
It is a pebble I am placing in the sand, a line I am drawing across the path, to remember.
Because, in so many ways, how I felt the last time I drew upon words to describe my feelings towards you, is so much different from how they are now. My understanding and thoughts towards past events were unique in themselves, as is my perspective now, and I know my perspective will continue to change, as time goes on. Such is life. In the past, I used to abhor writing down my thoughts, because of this perpetual shift. I used to consider them wrong or foolish, even shameful. Now I merely find them fascinating.
I look on to you, as you are and as you were, as I would look into a well. I have come to accept that so much is beyond my grasp and my sight, beyond my understanding. I no longer reach for it, nor do I attempt to truly make images out of the light reflecting in the half-hidden water. I understand that there is, in so many ways, no way to truly understand what happened, because I cannot possibly go back and observe, and even if I could, it would still only be from my perspective.
When I do think of you, it is usually in curiosity, as to what was truth and what was lie. I still believe that, at least for a majority of your tales, you either believed they were true, or felt you were only, in a way, stretching the truth to improve a true story. I can never know what you lied about, even if I spoke to you myself once more on good terms, because I can no longer trust any word that passes through your lips, which is a shame. Even if I could get inside your mind telepathically, there is always the potential that you yourself believe the things you say, thus making the effort fruitless and no more telling than were I to ask you myself.
I have seen you change so much. You were so fresh and raw, and you have hardened in many ways. You have latched onto past opinions that were still budding, and they have become thick vines of prejudice and self-righteousness. I watched it happen in the days that we were still together, and as the days pass, in the few instances that I have checked on you, they have merely become harder, thicker, tighter wound around your mind.
Who am I to say that you are wrong or right, but I do know that fundamentally, we disagree on all fronts.
And in many ways, I am…well. I cannot say I am disappointed, because that would imply that I ever believed you had the potential to become someone else. Perhaps I had hoped you would, perhaps I’d hoped I’d be able to sway and open your mind. I no longer remember, honestly.
You were right, in many ways. I did hope, and love, and believe in an image of you that I built up around you, more so than I loved you yourself, although I did love you, in your shadows and your bones, as well. I loved the words inside your pages, even as I loved the art that I painted upon your cover more, and allowed myself to focus on it more. Unjustly, and unfairly.
You are who you are. I wish I had truly allowed myself to understand that, the same way I wish you had allowed yourself to understand who I was. It is fortunate that eventually one of us did—and for all the pain I went through, and all the misguided mistakes you made, ultimately I am truly grateful for what you did for me, and what you did for us.
Because we are so fundamentally different, we are so fundamentally incompatible, spiritually, politically, sexually, mentally, and emotionally.
It attracted us to each other in the most bizarre of ways, and it created such intensity between us that was certainly worth noting, but that kind of a relationship cannot last.
Even a friendship under those circumstances would be strained, being that we are both so outspoken and firm in our own beliefs, that it would be nigh impossible to avoid the topics of conversation—politics, sexuality, religion, etc—that would cause arguments—arguments that we could never agree on, except to brush it back under the rug with the agreement to disagree. Something that we did so often.
And yet, we cared for each other deeply. I don’t entirely know why. Perhaps it was because we trusted each other with our demons. Perhaps it was because when the other person came face to face with those demons, they still embraced us, rather than judge, or turn away, or refute their reality.
You helped me out of a very deep hole, Daniel, before you ever put me in one yourself. And for that, too, I will always be grateful. You helped me to empty my closets of so many skeletons, telling stories that had never before seen the light of day, and that still so many people do not know. You allowed me to trust someone with absolute and complete certainty. To experience faith in its purest form. For that, I am grateful.
I am grateful for the good days we had together. For the sunset we watched by the parking deck, for the picnic in the field by the lake, for the dark, late-night walks. For the time when you comforted me on the bridge when I was crying and panicking over a fight I’d had at home. For the time you waited by so long with me on the deck before I had to leave again to go to school. For the time you held me so tightly and spun me around on the ice in a night that was dark blue and white. For the time that, when I asked you why it would matter if I died, you got so furious at me.
And I am grateful, in many ways, for the bad times. For the time you threatened to break my wrist. For the moments of rush and panic and fury in your room, that are still blurred in my memory. For the time we fought in the parking-lot. I can still remember the feeling of your fists pummeling into my back. For the times you misled me, and for the times you lied. For the times when I felt afraid, and guilty, and angry, and tired, and hurt. For the times when I felt twisted inside. For the times our demons danced together.
I am grateful for them, because they helped me learn. Even as they scarred me, and some of them I have not yet healed from, they helped me learn so much.
It will be a long time before I can trust anyone again, but I have made so much progress over the past months. And my experiences with you helped me recognize and side-step situations which would have been all-too-familiar.
And as I said to you on so many occasions—I am glad those experiences were with you, rather than someone else.
Things could have been so much worse. Things could be so much worse in the future, but at least now I am better prepared for them.
You made me stronger, even as you made me more vulnerable. You made me harder, even as you made me, inadvertently, more open and more understanding.
You helped me open my mind and open my heart and open my eyes so much more, simply because I was faced head on with your own stark, black-and-white opinions and prejudices.
You helped me learn so much about myself, both good and bad.
I have said many times on many different occasions, that it was either worth it, or not worth it, and that I do not love you, or that I will always love you, etc etc etc.
I don’t think that matters so much, really, in the grand scheme of things, because it doesn’t matter, really, if it was “worth” it—there’s no going back and changing it. It happened.
All that’s left now is to work with what I’ve gained.
I hope you are doing well, Fireheart.
And, at least right now, I hope to some day speak to you again—not this month, nor this year, nor the next. Not any time the could be construed as soon, as I still have so much healing and thinking left to do. And more experiences to push in between then and now, to better prepare me, if anything. Perhaps in four years, perhaps in nine. We shall see, I suppose. For now, I won’t worry about it.
“We cross our bridges when we come to them,
and burn them behind us,
with nothing to show for our progress
except a memory
of the smell of smoke,
and a presumption that
once our eyes watered.”
—Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead
1 ![junejupiter:
strawberryskies:
missmunchkinz:
petitedeath:
I will freely admit that I have never been a fan of modern art. Or blocks of colour or statues of vague human like figures that are supposed to express emotion. Its just stupid to me.
fucking this.
Um. That bottom picture is Barnett Newman’s Vir Heroicus Sublimis and it was painted in 1950-51. it’s hardly ‘now’. It’s not even Postmodern let alone contemporary.
“fucking this”
Only people who both have not bothered to understand the artists’ and movements’ intentions, nor bothered to experience these pieces in person, cannot understand the merit of abstract art.It’s apples to oranges. And you know what? This image irritates me just about as much as those “what happened” body/slut-shaming images. One of the wonderful things about art is that it is continually evolving, showing shifting perspectives and ideas. There is still a hell of a lot of figurative work that is just as realistic and beautiful as the first image, and it’s still fairly current. There is stuff that is just as esoteric and abstract as the colour field movement. And there is stuff that is absolutely and completely different from both of these things, both in the past and at present, that is worth knowing about, worth seeing—worth experiencing. In person. Because, as one of my professors has pointed out, it is impossible to truly get the feeling of a piece simply from a small jpeg on google search. But here’s my two cents and word of advice, if you actually have any interest in not wasting your time hating modern [especially abstract] art. Read up on it first. Find out the goals of the movement, why they did things the way they did. Understand it. And then go see it in person.It’s just like classic literature in a lot of cases. There’s reasons why people respect these things so much or put them on a pedestal, and even if you may not agree with those reasons and—even after reading analyses and dissertations and commentary—still think it’s a piece of shit and not worth reading [or in the case of art, looking at or buying]—at least you can sympathize with the idea behind it and those who believed in it.
For example, were you aware that the colour field movement’s primary objective, in a lot of cases, were to capture pure emotion in colour? The reason they did this was because they felt that subjective material—such as a vase, or a horse—was automatically tainted by the viewer’s personal history with whatever it was, that they could not help but project some kind of memory and association on the painting because of how they feel about its subject material. Colour, on the other hand, is much more raw, emotionally speaking, and being so far abstracted from any subject matter, it is far more objective than figurative painting.Additionally, the size is important. These paintings were often massive because the intent was to absolutely overwhelm you—to completely fill your field of vision with this colour to the point where you had no choice but to feel something. The best way to view a colour field painting, honestly, is close to the center of the canvas, and two to four feet away, depending on its size. Beyond that, there’s also another schools of thought that formed—the one in the image below seems to belong to the movement that believed in completely removing all evidence of the artist in the piece, often for similar reasons as to the reasoning behind removing subject material from the piece. It was a quest for absolute perfection—that is why you will find these pieces with huge fields of colour and perfectly straight lines, and—in a very good painting from one of these movements—you will not be able to see any brush strokes at all. It will be completely uniform and almost mechanic…but it was all done completely by hand.There is beauty in that. You may not particularly appreciate how it looks or find it particularly interesting, but if you understand it—and understand the work that went into it—perhaps you can appreciate it for what it is.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m18yhfvkUp1r3s5n0o1_500.jpg)
