Between

This post contains a reference to physical abuse.

I see you –
Between the yellow reflectors spaced so precisely along the guardrail. A twinkle in the darkness of night presented through that harsh but speedy separation. Honestly, I forgot you existed until you appeared. A most pitiful sympathy, an attempt at empathy was made though. Another living being, one who was once an extensive portion of my time; yet you escaped my recollection for so long. It only took your world falling apart for you to appear before me in the midnight pitch of those twisting mountain roads of route 30.

I saw you –
In the white dashes between every black void. An ache, a feeling of failure, self-doubt, reflection. All those moments felt so pathetic, a forgery of myself. A regret of every second I lived combined into those asphalt dashes of contemplation. That long drive felt like a teleportation suspended within eternity. What could never be, pounded farther into the finality of monument found in each concrete overpass. “You, In Weird Cities” playing on repeat.

For,

I see you –
In time’s perspective shift, in that potential we have for change in a matter of months. That crushing is now a joy, a gratitude, a perfection. Those moments now gleaming with the beacon of friendship we had all along. Hope, that we are not simply bound to desire founded through our external sensation.

I glimpsed at your soul –
In those words which traveled through a torturous journey from your lungs, squeezed through your throat, and managed to lift off your tongue; forming a floating pattern from your lips,

“I am in love with you.”

Those utterances hit something inside which feels like the soul, maybe a deeper state than self even. To have someone say that and mean it through their pupils, rounded into two black harvest moons; almost eclipsing the sliver of blue left in their iris. It’s an understanding beyond comprehension. Left field was where the ball came from as I found myself somehow running away from first base after you picked up third and sprinted towards me with it. As if temptation could be folded into love and still ring true. They say temptation is man’s weakness, but I often find myself just diagonal to the concept of a man.

I see the “man” –
The one you ended up with, which I find myself doubting the humanity of. Because being a “man” to him isn’t a concept which entwines with humanity; rather it makes one wander away as a thoughtless worm from all that makes us human. Could I have foiled the corrupt intentions of such a “man”, reduced to the instincts of a beast from treating you as an inanimate object? With an acceptance, with a blind-love? A deranged belief that I could grow feelings beyond that vain physical attraction; to make a relationship work out of that? To share with someone as disconnected from my worldview as you?

It would be better than the black which spread beyond your pupil; mixed with the iris blue and leaked onto the skin, enclosing your tearful eye. There could have been some joy there floating across a renewed and “True Blue“; maybe a more focused gaze from each of your two pupils. But I had to walk away as obligation, as if completing some saintly walk. Those walks often inflict more harm on humanity than good, for those walks happen to appear when real men are required to sprint a marathon.

I heard the whisper –
Of The spirit in every coincidence, The same spirit that told me walking away from her was the best option. That was until I saw the results of my inaction, until the people I thought so guided by The spirit were being herded into error which resurrects anew horrors we still weep and shudder over in their naming.

There’s a confidence in that delusion, there exists nothing more terrifying than it. To believe our own thoughts and ideas are channeled from eternal objectivity is to debase ourselves to becoming pathetic subjects of our own lies. I lament in the space between each mountain range, over the harm my own conviction caused you.

I see all the souls –
Still here close and distant.
Every living being.
Every line spoken through a text client.
Every translated vocal utterance through a transcontinental tube.
Every true physical face-to-face interaction.
Every moment spent with family.
All just as valid and real,
If I dared to comprehend their potential impact.

We relate –
Through our mutual hatred of work, but more than that. A connection, a care, an embrace. We see each other as people, something they could never take. Still continuing friendships, long past the of days of completing our supposed societal obligation.

I talked to so many friends –
Through a ProBoards forum while modifying an obscure game. We thought we were so unique, that each level constructed was something grand. That’s the childlike wonder I desire again; the feeling of creation, to be a god! That vision stripped from me through our vile requirement of subjective productivity, it’s funny that this very specific subjectivity just so happens to benefit a few billionaires. It is my moral obligation to make a billionaire slightly more money.

What a joke! You dare to even call that a society?

We could not turn a man into a more vile creature. Masculinity is now to waste away your very being towards the acquisition of magical electronic numbers for a guy that look like Lex Luthor in the hopes you receive some scraps. These same people want to talk about leftist cuckoldry. Oh, to be freed from those petty disputes! To create that art as a child again, in glorious ignorance of its subpar quality! I miss when the journey with you was so simple.

I remember with each of you –

Such vivid clarity, train tracks in the basement.
Watching you play Oregon trail.
Adventures through the woods.
WWE matches on the trampoline.
Tackle football without padding.
Need for Speed: High Stakes on the CRT.
Frogger’s Adventures, four players one desk.

That was living! It felt like those days would be eternal.

I was introduced to you –
Through Team Fortress 2, through League, through other obscure games. Playing Overwatch and Jackbox with friends. More human interaction, friends—grafted through the initial branch; stretching out towards further branches. To think, some of these souls I’ve had the privilege of sharing the same general physical space with.

Each relationship, every visit, every soul I cherished and still cherish, oh the value! Though I wish I displayed it in a way closer to perfection; a better connection while respecting boundaries and managing my own introverted state.

I found you –
Through a combination of LEDs while browsing smaller streams. To think I never really saw you with my eyeballs, only the image a monitor screen presents from a compressed representation. Never thought you would be the sorta friend staying up until 3AM guessing the price of houses we could never afford without selling our souls. Talking on and off through depressive spells and busy lives. But we’re still always there, living in the truth of friendship.

I forgot you –
Have done and still do more for me than I could even begin to remember. In every action there is love itself speaking, even if sometimes misguided; motive more pure than the holiest of saints.

I still love –
Watching baseball with you.
Those evenings of relation, for there has become less and less to relate us beyond the biological.
A freedom mixed with tragedy.
Sometimes it feels “sorry” is a requirement, but I know change for the better never warrants an apology.

I see you –
For our short journey between the mountains; until our pardon into the nothingness.
Would it be too far to say I love you?
In this venture between nothing and nothing?
Maybe it’s too far, because love is an action.
One I still too often fail to take.
At least let me thank you for being here,

For being alive.
For breathing still.

For holding onto to something so I get to see you smile again.
Hear you laugh.
Know a passion in your eye for something, anything.
A triumph over nihilism!
A victory for humanity!
A life you live!
There is nothing more powerful than seeing mountains move through the reflection in your eye.
A universe without you would be one where the atoms just don’t bounce right.

I see you –
Between every moment.
Humanity itself ❤

Insist on yourself; never imitate. Your own gift you can present every moment with the cumulative force of a whole life’s cultivation; but of the adopted talent of another, you have only an extemporaneous, half possession.

Emerson, Self-Reliance