Viewing lights under the surface

[delga]

And you’re miserable. You’re so miserable that you’re making other people miserable. People you love you, people who care for you. People like your sisters who look at you and your brother and want to cry.

My friend was dumped today. And for her, it sucks. I know what that’s like; at least I had a semi-reason. But I’m sad too. Because you’re miserable and so am I. So I’m writing it down like a public declaration and I’m heralding this out loud, just the way we wanted to, even though I’m a child and you’re not that far from where I am now.

Do you remember that night when we went to Jaiman’s? For Nika’s thing? Don’t you remember that it was cold? Don’t you remember sitting on the steps? I wrote about that like it was some story, some bitter fiction. I wrote about it like a dream because that’s how I remember it. I remember us sitting there and bantering; sitting and counting the stars (one for every loving breath, or so you said. For a scientist, you’re profound and stunningly vague) on our fingers; sitting and just being in each other’s presence with everything else a million miles away. And I remember thinking I don’t love you; I don’t know what that is. I remember thinking that and remember that it was cold.

When you ‘let me go’ (as you like to put it) there was a grief and I didn’t know what to make of it. Because I hadn’t ever felt that before and because I didn’t know what it meant? Had I ‘loved and lost’? Or was I just experiencing some melodrama? Even now, with the mixed phone call messages and the constant third-person recollections of fights, I’m not sure what it means. I don’t think - don’t know - if I’m old enough to understand what this is about. But I’m old enough to know that when you called, I stopped being in that half-aware state of maybe-happiness.

Do you even know what it is that you want? From me, from yourself? Do you even understand what this is? Jenna is a bitch to the world and his wife but she loves you and Raj, like Dev loves Ana. Because you’re family and you’re blood and because you’re all that she feels she has most of the time. And that’s why you have to choose Raj – because he’s family and I’m not. And I understand that. But please, no accusations. No remorse and late night phone calls or letters that you write in half-drunken state of precognition wherein you ramble on about what you are and what I am and how together the heat of combustion is self-consuming because I don’t feel that. I don’t want that. I’m too confused for that kind of tenderness. Because I’m too young and too naïve and far too much like your mind set to be able to deal with this rationally. Stepping away and being objective isn’t an option for me.

So we’re agreed? We stop this? I already put this in a box but now there are holes in the box and I’ve run out of ribbon so you’ll just have to be buried in the soil, where at least the Earth is cleansing.