Sometimes it is 11:38 at night and no one is awake but you. You’re sure your cat is fast asleep, wrapped warmly into a ball with her face hidden under her right paw as she counts the seconds with the minutest movements of her chest. It is in this case that I realise it.
Dear friend,
How are you? It has been so long since we spoke. It almost feels like we’ve been stranded in some distant lands with no way to keep in touch.
I have been well. A mix of emotions and thoughts as always. Moments of elation but also anxiety. There’s a powerful message in a movie I watched whereby after much struggle to do things well, Anxiety the emotion, manages to replace the sense of self of the main character with something they thought would be better. But in that moment the sense of self booms “I’m not good enough” to the great surprise of Anxiety and the great pang of sadness in me. But I guess that’s not what I feel at all. It’s deeper than that, an unsettling feeling that something’s off, a bit blurry but somehow dangerous to everything that keeps me centred. I can’t seem to get more than a glimpse of the feeling yet I know it’s power to shake me.
I tried a few times to reach you. In fact since I last saw you in person I tried. And we spoke a few times over the summer and it was quite nice in fact. You supported an idea I had to study. That was nice. And you’ve shared too your projects this year and the many studies you’ve done.
But perhaps I knew and didn’t want to accept something hard. You don’t need me, right? Not in the way Saint-Exupery said in his letter to his friend in prison. And in a way that is a beautiful beautiful realisation. Because it means you have enough, that you have someone to need at 2am. And it means I can let go of that thought every other week about chatting with my best friend. My best friend. My friend. My. You.
And so as tears burn down the side of face I write a dramatic goodbye which you will never hear nor read. And it was written well before we became friends. It is written that all things have their time and place. Where is it written? In time itself and the events which make it.
I only wonder how you’ve been. And at times I have had long battles in my head, which already proves that this is the best thing that can happen, because I have enough. And you were part of that enough. And I am too sticky and this is what led me to blunder and hurt this friendship once before already.
But I think and rethink and I am happy. So until the next time, with whatever meaning you have of our friendship, I am
Da
And just as I write the string of my name I immediately delete the message I just wrote. As I do every day in my head. Write and delete. Write and delete. Right and Elite. Write an elite. And just like that I have distorted it enough to forget.
And then your message comes in to my inbox as the piano key hits the low G. And the distortion twists harder but now I believe in nothing I have ever written and since it is deleted it is forgotten.
Hi Day,
Sorr/11673(/-1;1<<]%^?_((62?>€¥]![€[['qaiauawvwqU62)81&-0$!?&&!2$2(@-'Jwuqyq-(1;1))]]])))
Done.