and we are leaving some things unsaid.

I’m tired of apologising. I wanted comfort, and you gave it to me. You were constant, patient and unfailingly ready to listen. And that, I thought, was all I wanted. I didn’t want to have to evaluate your trustworthiness, or your affection. I was in it for the moment, and I knew it. I don’t think I consciously played with your emotions.

I was selfish. But I wanted, just for once, to taste selfishness. To revel in self-absorption and to glory in my indifference to you.

Because, as I’ve realised, I was startlingly indifferent to you. You inspired nothing more in me than the sort of pitying affection I would feel for a puppy or a baby. I used you, but I wasn’t remorseful then. I wanted to use you, I wanted to feel you want me, I wanted, more than anything else, to know that I held you in the palm of my hand.

Perhaps I was deluding myself, but I wanted to live with my delusions. To be carefree, to never commit to more than sincere self-indulgence – that was what you promised my disillusioned self.

So I’m not sorry. For once in my life, I played with someone’s emotions. As much as I’ve been tossed around, turned aside, forgotten about and laughed over, I subjected you to it all. Twenty-one years’ worth of being overlooked, underestimated and affectionately pitied. If it seems horrible, callous and unrepentantly cruel – then yes, that was what I wanted to be.

I was angry when I wrote that. I believed some of it, and wanted to believe the rest because I couldn’t admit to myself that you had made me care. And so I chose everything that was most hurtful, that picked apart your deepest insecurities, and betrayed all your confidences in one angry stroke. I am almost certain you read it, and that that is why you have ignored every attempt I’ve made since to explain myself to you. I miss you so tremendously that I cannot talk about it to anyone. You know how singular that is – my panacea for all ills is speech, to give my problems to everyone I know so that I need not think about them any more. But with you, I have pretended. I have laughed about you, mocked you, scorned whatever our relationship was to me and told everyone that it was nothing. And I almost convinced myself that that was the truth.

But now, all I feel is the absence of you. It’s all I’ve felt for months. I see road signs I want to text you about, I have dilemmas for you to help me out of, people I want to bitch about to you, and facts to impart that only you would find interesting. I look for you everywhere, in the hope that an awkward face-to-face meeting will dispel this spell of silence. I stalk you, and wonder if you have found someone else. I have sent so many emails, written unsent letters and tried to find some way in which I can tell you how much I miss you. How much you, as I have belatedly realised, meant to me. It is horrible enough to know that I threw it all away, but it is worse to know that I can never apologise to you for the way it ended. Because I didn’t want it to end like that, if it had to end at all. I thought we had months ahead of us, if not years; months in which we could make mistakes, get on each other’s nerves, laugh at the world and try, as hard as we could, to make whatever we had work.

Because, for what it’s worth, you made me so happy. You made me feel beautiful and clever and loved. Despite my nastiness, my frequent changes of heart, my constant testing of your affections – you stuck it out for so long that when you suddenly decided it was over, I had just begun to let myself care. Even now, as I write this, I can almost hear your ironic disapproval of my tone, mocking my seriousness and laughing at how “dramatic” my words make everything seem. But that’s how it is with me, and I thought you knew that. It took you long enough to get through all the barriers I’d built around myself when you came along. I was terrified of letting someone in again, for fear that they would break my heart again. I didn’t think I could stand it. But gradually, what I realised was that you made me feel safe. You don’t know how difficult it was for me to trust you, but you were so patient and kind and sweet that I couldn’t help it.

I miss you. More than you will ever know, I suppose.

and if your glass heart should crack, and for a second you turn back

[Walk On - U2]

Growing up sucks.

I hate that I have to live with the consequences of my actions. I hate knowing now, from experience, that thoughtlessness and cruelty nearly always end badly.

I suppose, after a week of stewing over the past and hoping to make amends, I have to come to terms with the fact that sometimes, guilt cannot be assuaged, and what I’ve lost and learnt to value too late can never be reclaimed.

It’s a hard lesson to learn. And it’s harder to bear knowing that I brought it all upon myself.

But what can one do but pick up the pieces, put away the memories, and go on?

Peace.

…

The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.

- ‘Funeral Blues’, W.H Auden

At almost 5.00 am, GMT, a friend of mine called. What he said to me was incomprehensible: someone we both knew and loved, was dead. I refused to believe him. I hoped it was some sort of sick, twisted joke. Because the person who was gone, the person who had left us was someone upon whom nobody would ever wish anything bad.

Words are all I can give you. My poor tribute, my laughable thank-you for everything you were, everything you did and everything you inspired.

Tragedy at 23, it seems absurd. But I hope you know how much you meant.

We’re all so preoccupied with our particular selfish dreams of brilliance, glory, money and success.

But perhaps, it is no bad thing to be a good person; to be a person whose absence brings with it a vacuum not easily filled.

All is now numbness and silence.

I’ll miss you, Reuben.

that’s enough for now, he should’ve never left you broken

You can wake up one morning, months and months afterward, in a strange, new place, surrounded by people who know nothing of your history – and you can miss the old familiarity in a way that nobody will understand.

You miss the old routine, the assumptions of complicity, under cover of darkness. You miss the power you knew you had over somebody, something, somewhere. You miss those plans that made and executed themselves; those people who knew you well enough to drag you out of yourself to keep you safe.

You even miss those people you know don’t deserve to be missed, don’t deserve to be construed as lacking in your present life, only because they were part of an old, familiar, wonderful life.

And the worst part is, it’s those people who haunt your dreams for a while, with impossible visions of what might have been.

-

It’s nearly half past three in the morning, and I’ve been reading forgotten words, revisiting a forgotten time, and thinking about people I used to know, people I used to be, in a time that seems so long ago now.

juliet says, hey it’s romeo.

Dream-like, the past floated by.

Then it grew stronger; nebulous forms with ragged edges grew sharp, from blurry to oppressively opaque. Cold, from within and without, flooded the room.

Voices, as if from a far distance echo relentlessly, pleading, coaxing, importuning you to listen, to comprehend and so you do, attempting to fathom meanings that are false.

Sleep is eaten away. The hollowness you buried fills you up once more. You must escape, but you cannot: you are transfixed, despite yourself. You scream, you weep, you fall but still, you listen.

Memories turn treacherous. They hurl themselves against your defences, shattering, tearing, ripping you apart.

Your old, forgotten friends, self-pity, doubt and regret return to your side, forgiving your past neglect.

But now, your voice returns. “No!”, you scream, “Stop!”.

The phantoms pause in their onslaught. “Enough”, you say, firmly.

Slowly, the nightmare withers. Your memories curl up. You blink, and you find yourself alone once more.

Softly, enveloped in sleep, you dream.