I am in the process of closing yet another account of yours.
This may be the last one. I am tired. Filling out numbers to identify you, making you faceless. It’s exhausting. You weren’t numbers. You were a deep laugh and warm eyes and salt and pepper hair. You were starched shirts and impeccable ties. You were weekend lazy in that faded purple shirt I would always tease you about. I am tired of filling out these ridiculous bits of your life that do absolutely nothing to explain who you were and how you filled my life with so much.
Nonetheless, you’re gift came at an appropriate time. You always save me. How do you do that? Even when you are gone, for years now, it’s as though your hand is still guiding me so I don’t fall on my face. You still let me make my mistakes, but are there to swoop in and help buffer the hurt. It makes the pain worse, feeling as though you’re still around but I can’t reach out to you, speak to you, pour out my troubles to your patient ear.
I miss you. This sentence seems weak, insufficient. But it’s the only thing that can describe what I feel, despite the fact that it is leagues away from how much hurt is there. I miss you and I can’t decide whether it would be better to stop or not.
I love you.
There is no meaning behind this, no motive. It’s just something that needed to be said, a reminder lest I forget.
I remember you
That is what death means. We exist in the minds of other people, in thousands of memory clusters, and one by one those clusters fade and disappear. Some years from now, at a funeral with a slide show, only one person will be able to say who we were. Then no one will know.
A death makes the living see themselves too clearly; after they have been in its presence, they become exaggerated.
Etc.
Today is your death anniversary.
The wind was crazy cold this morning, and all I could think about was you. Every few minutes you come to mind. And I’m trying not to feel so sad about it, but it’s one of those things a person can’t control. Of course, I have every right to feel sad. You’re gone. And I still need you. I’ve closed myself off even more now, because you were really the only one I felt safe with, who would listen to me without judgment or pity. I don’t have that anymore.
It’s not all bad though. I’ve learned a little bit more about myself, I’ve learned how to take care of myself better. Things you assured me would happen. Still. It’s not the same.
I realized how much of my actions were because of you. I was only motivated to push myself and to succeed because of your quiet support. Without it, I’ve been adrift. I don’t know what I want and I still haven’t been able to figure it out even after all these years.
Sometimes I imagine how my life would be different if you were still around. It’s hard though. I’ve managed to work around the gaping hole of your absence for so long now that it’s second nature. So why can’t I work around the grief? I’m tired, I guess. I don’t remember what it’s like not to be.
(Source: kiss-shot)
"Was she really beautiful? Was she at least what they call attractive? She was exasperation, she was torture. … She smelled of damp cotton, axillary tufts,and nenuphars, like mad Ophelia."
Ada or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
"She was on bad terms with memory."
Ada or Ardor, Vladimir Nabokov
Elle est folle et mauvaise, cette fille.
"I clear a space to write, for you, to you, against you … I search for you through the spirals of all my sentences. I throw out whole pages of manuscript because I cannot find you in them. I search for you in small details, in the shapes of my verbs, the quality of my phrases."
Hallucinating Foucault, Patricia Duncker
