As I perused through the ancient library that you left dusty blog shelf, insight dawned on me. You were always this way, and you treated me exactly like him so many years ago. Now I know you’re likely gone for pretty much good, because of the way you treat people that you quarrel with. This trove of small snippets is a gem for understanding a private person like you - a spiteful person it seems. Ironically, this chance investigation has given me far more of a sense of closure, that very same one that you worship in our conversations, than anything else. It’s exciting and intriguing in a court life fashion to see that Machiavelli was right and history indeed does repeat itself.
I’m never going to tell you that I found them, but I wonder how I should use this information? The nefarious courtier side of me is saying that I should tease you ever so subtly, and perhaps hint that my intelligence has grown. But we aren’t talking at the moment. You made this space, just like you did with many before, chasing the irritable and vapid concept of closure rather than the far more enlightened concept of making amends or treaty. That’s what friends do, I thought. I was under the impression you were more enlightened than that, but perhaps your words about how you’ve fallen are truthful.
Just as you cut him out, so you cut me out - but for different reasons. What was it even? The two times I inquired about your feelings on the situation? The two times where you lacked any explanation, after years of friendship I might add. After so many good moments that far outweighed any bad, you would think that you might have wanted to save it. When you remarked to me back in May about your difficulty keeping friends, it seems very much like that is indeed a problem. I have the answer, or some tentative solutions, but since you don’t want to take your medicine it can’t be helped. Perhaps you’ve never experienced a successful conflict resolution before. Our mutual friend M mentioned that very same insight over beers and pool the week before she moved to Montreal.
I’m still mad at you, and probably always will be until you come to the realization that I’m not at fault here. I thought I was, for the past two months of silence, but silence led to insight with meditations. It’s probably better that we’re not talking, and I can’t think of what I would say to you for treating me like garbage. I’ve been gradually moving on to the point where I just don’t fucking care (this letter proves otherwise), because there’s nothing I can do in the situation where you won’t take and twist into some kind of victimization or projection. But what with so many mutual friends at stake, I just want to warn them about you. I want to show them your former writing, and point and say, you see what she told you and I instead? You either lied about who you are, or you are having a mental health episode. The lack of forthrightness could be either of those. If it’s the latter, let me help you. If it’s the former, it makes a lot of sense.
To expose this, even with my heart torn in half, wouldn’t be right. I still want to believe that you just have a keen blind spot with your empathy. I can hear your desperation for sustained meaningful interaction echoed, through those historic lines on the screen of your former blog and in the springtime conversations between us. I wonder how you’ve changed from the times before I met you. You seemed to be a careful and witty person when we bantered, but your immaturity and lack of self-awareness shows in your writing here. I thought I was the stuttering fool, but it appears that it takes two. If anything, in the recent sense you’re far more bitter, which lends itself regularly to caustic wit. You’ve lost a lot of people from your life and you’re a bizarre mix of social loner, and I’m beginning to understand that it’s because of your own designs. You burn some bridges, but you don’t understand why you’ve caught fire yourself. You’re standing on the bridge while you lit it up.
I always saw you as a strange complicated beast, a chimera of superficial adoration mixed with some breathtaking depth. I didn’t realize that you were also the Fox out of Aesop’s Fable about sour grapes, with such transparently petulant remarks about things that have happened. You’ve clearly moved beyond your former self in some regard though, and had a whole two years of a relationship to adapt and tweak your persona in colourful ways. I only met you as you began that ordeal with him. What remains in you is still weak in courage. You said self-deprecatingly you were a people pleaser, but don’t judge me through that lens of yours just because it’s the one you always use. Just because you are one, doesn’t mean I want to exploit you like one. You say you give and give ad infinitum - such lines are often said by people who don’t know that taking is sometimes more appropriate for balance. You think I wanted something from you. Well, I did want something. I wanted more of those conversations on meandering paths through the woods. I wanted to conscript you for midnight ice cream and tea runs, and shoot the breeze in the car.
That is all. Your assumptions of my intentions and my insistence on detente fucked up the entire scenario, and made me uncertain of my usual confident and cheeky self when detente made you think you were right. Well, you were wrong. I was just trying to respect you, but it seems that backfired. I don’t care if you’ve learned how to physically fight, you’re still a kind of coward that doesn’t know how to right a wrong. I suppose you think your stubbornness keeps you safe. That’s a symptom of a frail ego, instead of pushing through. You’ve pushed through in so many ways before I am so proud of you sometimes, but this is a stumbling block that has the potential to be a deadly poison. I cannot blame you for that lack of insight - I see your comments on your mental health on record here - but I’m being unjustly punished for something I shouldn’t be punished for.
Your inner troubles certainly put me to trial. You gave me an impossible test, and those letters to yourself prove it. And now, these mighty walls…
“Isn’t it fucking terrifying that no matter how many promises they made, no matter how long you’ve been together, someone can get up and walk out of your life without a second thought and you have to carry on living because the world doesn’t stop for any of us”
Two days ago I meditated for half an hour…all the pain and apathy from the past two months dispersed, if only for that day. I don’t know how, it seems unreal. Now I want to but can’t bring myself to do it. My mind is a strange place.
