Silence and guilt

   I would be lying if I said that the silence did not hurt me, for it did. It hurt me in quiet, subtle ways. It was not just the thought that I would not get to talk to him again perhaps. It was not just the worry that perhaps something might have happened to him. There was also a small, sneaking suspicion, that perhaps I am being punished. Many people have punished me with silence -  it doesn't have the same effect as yelling. The yelling makes you shut down, it blocks out every other noise. The silence on the other hand has an eroding effect.

  I felt guilty for bringing up that the distance is slowly eating away at me. I did not say it all. I did not say how in spite of it all I feel like we have turned into Penelopes both of us, him waiting for me to arrive and me waiting for him to choose himself, to get better. I did not say how painful it is to sustain it all through a screen and meeting once per year. How lonely I am, how scared out of my wits I am half the time when he's not well. 

  I feel guilty for not knowing how to love better someone who can't choose his mental health when my own has also been collapsing for years. I feel guilty for not being able to sustain this better. I feel guilty for feeling that I have been chasing after a mirage. I feel guilty for seeing and not seeing that maybe we missed our chance or maybe it has not arrived yet. I feel guilty for it all.

  It scares me shitless. It does - I don't see how I can keep hanging on and I don't see how I can stop either. And there is another fear as well: noone will accept me the way that he has. And noone has understood and responded as quickly and openly as he has. Should that not be enough? I always wanted to believe that timing was mostly a myth but it turns out sometimes timing can truly fuck you up.

  I wanted to be more poetic about this. But sometimes there are no poetic words at hand.

*

   These days I turn to writing any chance I get - my writing is bad and without a flow but as imperfect as it is, it helps me process all the thoughts that have been running rampant. Taking a trip did me good but all the things that happened and those that were running in the background were overwhelming. My memories are inconsistent and I have to fight a losing battle to at least experience their aftertaste while it lasts.

  In truth I have grown so accustomed to being quiet and alone in the last couple of years that being in the presence of people - ones that matter - is almost a new experience. It fills me with the same rush of diving into the unknown and for the first time in a long time I found myself fighting against physical tiredness in order to win some extra time. That had stopped happening long before the pandemic hit, somehow I had wilted withing myself while trying to get better and fight the guilt for not being so.

  A new era is coming, that much I know. I do not know what it brings with it. But at the moment I am letting myself go with the "what the hell" feeling of the moment. It is odd to start taking off the shackles that you have been analysing for so long. It is odd also to come face to face with feelings and realities that you have tried to avoid for some time. In some stories no one can win the moral high ground. 

 The hardest thing has been to stop reminiscing about the past so much that you detach from the present. In my trip I saw people that I had not seen for more than a year and the gap of time required of me to be present 100% and to be open and receiving and to feel emotions bubble up within me.

  It was a freeing thing. 

  At the same time I realised how much I have been circling around my doubts. I wondered, in this impossible connection that I have built over the past three years, if I were in a better place psychologically, would it have taken me less time to realise that it's not covering my needs? I was near another person that was attracting me from the past and the reality of his physical presence made me almost physically dizzy - there was no sexual proximity but he was there and I could see him and hear him and it all had a different gravity. 

  I feel the end of many chapters approaching at the same time and it's scaring but at the same time I am tired of reading them.

  Soon I will leave.