Sharpening the knives
Emo post after the jump. Comments have been disabled.
I dreamed of you last night, and it ruined my whole day. I dreamed of you last night because of that one careless comment by someone, that led to my wondering if there was someone new, someone who would be the invisible element of healing they left out on your favourite Threadless shirt.
I always said karma’s a bitch, but she’s fair. And now her sights are trained on me. As was done unto me, I have done unto you, and now you return the favour. It sucks to know you’ve been replaced, that all the emotion and intimacy can be so easily substituted. I tried to spare you that - we agreed we would each inform the other - but now you aren’t even speaking to me.
I know you deleted me off MSN. Whether out of vengeance or a sense of self-protection, I can’t say. Maybe it was the online equivalent of deleting someone’s number to stave off drunk-dialling. Perhaps you were afraid it would expose you to things you’d rather not see. Or you just got sick of my display picture, our special little inside joke of an avatar. Such is the nature of relationships in the age of tech.
I can’t unsee those pictures. Although they’ve yet to reach the point of hurting me, they’re driving me into a cycle of paranoia. I thought you’d sold out, thrown away your dilapidated birthday gift for a bourgeois Crumpler. Until I saw it lurking in the background, its familiar lumpy shape reappearing as part of your silhouette. Some part of me is comforted, but that seems to be all I recognise of your possessions. You and I have both got new haircuts, new eyewear, new clothes as though we were trying to redefine ourselves as individual beings, as though material goods could cover up the many scars we left on each other.
Yes, you hurt me as much as I hurt you. Your silence cuts into my life, leaving it a dark, cold void while your existence shines on as it always did. I was the guilty party, and I deserve this as my punishment. You were the wronged one, the victim, and somehow you got the better end of the deal. The victim can stand up and fight again, but there is no glory for the victor, nowhere to go but to fall. Everyone loves the underdog.
Is this how it felt for him, 5 years ago, when I rebuffed his attempts at reconciliation? That it was a year before I could look him in the face, and 3 years before I finally found closure. Is that how it will be for you, too? Well, you have your year. Far away from me, maybe you’ll recover enough to be able to brush me off as just another life experience, the kind that fades from memory and only returns when something else makes it salient. And several years down the line, the memories we built will become purely academic, no longer possessing any emotional content. But I can tell you with certainty: He never shed tears for me the way I do for you.
I have never asked you to be happy for me. There is no point, just as there’s no point asking you to die for me. I cannot ask for your blessing when I cannot give it to you, were you in my position. I’m dying of envy and regret, as karma twists the knives in my heart. And the soundtrack to my torture is Jewel’s “You Were Meant For Me”, because I still can’t shake that feeling. Even though I believe in free will and the Serendipity Theory.
I don’t hate you either. Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.
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