Of late, I have come to an unfortunate epiphany; that unforseen damage was done when I tried to switch off a part of myself.
The memory of a night spent together between the sheets, maybe a year before, was becoming too much to bear. She had just broken up, and so had I, and we were thrown together by a friend into a room. I did not want to take advantage, so we just talked - her to the empty air before her and me to her back. Then we slept. When I awoke she was gone - downstairs, so I sighed and rolled over. Our paths crossed sparingly and before long she was entwined with another. I saw her one last time before she went travelling far away for many months - nodding and smiling and wishing them both well. It was then, as I stepped out through the door, that I pushed the button and lost more than I bargained for, yet less than I planned, because buttons and pulleys do not control the heart.
Nowadays, I
remember feelings more than I experience them; as contrived approximations to maintain the illusion of emotional connection, and that was not in the plan. I have committed some horrible, naieve butchery upon myself. I could blame another; some phantom who fled into the night whilst I picked up the knife and scrambled for the lights. But no. It is me, I am sure - trying furiously to deny the will of a powerful beast long tethered inside me that cannot be switched off.
I know this because I never felt it before and I do not remember feeling before it; this sensation forever unjaded against the always-fading. Sometimes, I think this feeling that is so lonely in it's power might be all that is left of me, and I am glad that it is, in a way, because when that button was pressed the feeling survived and something else fell into the darkness; maybe Selfishness and Foolhardiness. Or was it Courage and Bravery? Maybe it was The Opportunity Who Knocked falling hard against the blackness down there - the one in a million chance lying broken in the dirt.
There is not much I can taste anymore, so the memories I have could be bitter or sweet; playing with breadsticks and piggy-backs and cameras at a party when I met your new boyfriend; repelling swans at the waterside when the clouds broke for us - the only sun I saw as I passed through a storm on my holidays; when we were disguised holding hands in the street - my most precious of memories.
Yet precious is dangerous, and perhaps I should have courage and risk loving another, lest I wither and waste in the summer of years I might wish I had treasured.
