Extraordinarily Ordinary

Old friend, I think of you often.

Your existence is a monument of significance against which all things are referenced.

I often wonder if I am just chasing after your ghost; looking for whispers of what we once had in the shadows of others. (In the shadow of myself).

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You would think it funny, old friend.

People nowadays think that I am shy, they feel that I am kind, that I am sweet.

Maybe I took more from you than I knew? Maybe I slipped into your shed skin because I knew that yours was a form to be loved.

Buried my fire and steel in swaths of cotton candy; so sweet, so effervescent.

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Do you remember? How I hated your seemingly feigned innocence? How I resented the frailty and incompetence that only seemed to enhance your charm?

It is an awfully comfortable role to assume, maybe I can understand you better now that you’re so far away.

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I have a word to describe what we used to have now:

Codependency.

How seductive it is to imagine that I could ever again be so deeply enmeshed with a person, that people might forget where one of us ended and the other began, that our names would be sacrificed to pay homage to the bonds that wound our hearts together.

I remember lying together in our youth, a breath apart, legs tangled in the thick of the night pressing myself against you so that I might feel just a little less alone.

I would open my heart to you, pour every thought and feeling into our late-night talks, and listen to you as well in the hopes that we could understand each other on some untouchable level, that we might love and know one another to such a degree that we would never be apart.

I was always the more desperate for such a connection.

But I dragged you in regardless, you who were less broken.

I received your letter so many years later, a message with just a simple apology.

“Sorry for using you as an emotional crutch”

Old friend, back then I would have had it no other way.

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I wonder what you would think of me now, how you would see the person I have become.

I wonder too, what has become of you. Have you flourished and grown? Found your independence that so many in your life withheld from you?

Have you fallen into the path that was predestined for you?

Have I?

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I hope you know that I did love you.

Selfish as it may be to say it, after everything I’ve done.

I hope you know that when I nursed you back to health it was with the fullest sincerity.

That every kind word and offered affection was true.

What I hated wasn’t you, but rather how distorted and broken I seemed to look in your shadow.

What I hated was the fear that it was only me truly clinging to the idea that we were something more.

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Old friend, in spite of the toxic connection we had, I hope that sometimes you can look back on our childhood with kind eyes.

I hope you can reminisce and remember the parts of us that were beautiful.

I hope you remember how it felt, to lay at midnight and share whispered secrets. Falling asleep comforted by the closeness of our hearts.

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I love you, old friend.

I think I always will.