Everything will be all right
Isn’t that what I’ve been saying? I think that’s what I’ve been saying. I wonder who I’m talking to.
So I saw him, you know. There he was, right in front of me. Like I wouldn’t hand it all over for just the right look, the right look and nothing more. I kind of did anyway. Cause, whether he knows it or not, it’s his. Not much I can do about that. He keeps me from everyone else, keeps me from doing things for lack of something better, keeps me from throwing it in and giving myself away. And that’s good. It’s not good that I don’t think, on my own, that I am capable of all that, but it’s good to have motivation if motivation is what’s needed. It’s not good that he’s the motivation because he’s wrong. He’s wrong, wrong wrong. He’s everything that’s wrong with everything I do. He likes women. Lots of them, seemingly indiscriminately. And that, boy, that breaks my heart. He appears to have no boundaries and no respect for commitment. He’s everyone’s best friend and no one seems to be more important than anyone else. So I don’t know why I would lay so much on the idea of him, when the reality of him is completely, well, wrong.
But I do know. I know what it is, and I know where it goes. What it is is that he makes me feel things, things that I had written off as dangerous and mistaken and unreal, things that I had decided were all in my head and had no place in the world of adult interaction. Hope, and happiness, and a sense of the youth that I thought I had lost. He makes me think that those things are out there and can be had, if the planets are aligned correctly. That’s asking a lot, but it is not impossible. I see him, there, and I think what I would not give to give him all those things, those things that no one gets because they get washed away in the flood of tears for someone else, and by the time we get where we are we’ve forgotten what it felt like to have those things, and to want to have them with someone else. I want to take him and tell him and show him what he does to me, even if for no reason other than to keep it from wasting, because where will it go, stuck in my head? It will melt away in the months of watching him inspire that in others, watching him walk around with no idea of what he’s holding, even if he doesn’t feel its weight. Hearing how he took it from someone else and it was meaningless because it was not what he can do, it was not this thing, this thing, this thing that I have. And I let it go because I know where it goes.
And where it goes is not anywhere I am interested in. Where it goes is awkwardness, and caution, and broken glass. It goes to wondering how much you can say and what you can do and where the lines are, it goes to paying attention and I am not interested in any of that, because that’s not what he does to me. What he does to me is freedom, not repression. He gives me light, not heavy and I am not so naïve to think that people want to know when they do that, when the very knowledge of them is a lever. I am not so stupid. I know how things work, and how they work is this: I keep it, it’s for me and only me and if I don’t give it to him then he can’t take it away, and if I don’t tell him he can’t take it away and I will never have to see that look, that look that is sorrow and oh no and the worst, confusion. And I get to have my hope, and my happiness, and my youth, and when I see him with other people it does not actually kill me because he doesn’t know, and he still doesn’t know and not knowing keeps it that far from the root of the actual evil, which is my heart. And if I keep it from my heart then really, really then, everything really will be all right.
So I saw him, you know. There he was, right in front of me. Like I wouldn’t hand it all over for just the right look, the right look and nothing more. I kind of did anyway. Cause, whether he knows it or not, it’s his. Not much I can do about that. He keeps me from everyone else, keeps me from doing things for lack of something better, keeps me from throwing it in and giving myself away. And that’s good. It’s not good that I don’t think, on my own, that I am capable of all that, but it’s good to have motivation if motivation is what’s needed. It’s not good that he’s the motivation because he’s wrong. He’s wrong, wrong wrong. He’s everything that’s wrong with everything I do. He likes women. Lots of them, seemingly indiscriminately. And that, boy, that breaks my heart. He appears to have no boundaries and no respect for commitment. He’s everyone’s best friend and no one seems to be more important than anyone else. So I don’t know why I would lay so much on the idea of him, when the reality of him is completely, well, wrong.
But I do know. I know what it is, and I know where it goes. What it is is that he makes me feel things, things that I had written off as dangerous and mistaken and unreal, things that I had decided were all in my head and had no place in the world of adult interaction. Hope, and happiness, and a sense of the youth that I thought I had lost. He makes me think that those things are out there and can be had, if the planets are aligned correctly. That’s asking a lot, but it is not impossible. I see him, there, and I think what I would not give to give him all those things, those things that no one gets because they get washed away in the flood of tears for someone else, and by the time we get where we are we’ve forgotten what it felt like to have those things, and to want to have them with someone else. I want to take him and tell him and show him what he does to me, even if for no reason other than to keep it from wasting, because where will it go, stuck in my head? It will melt away in the months of watching him inspire that in others, watching him walk around with no idea of what he’s holding, even if he doesn’t feel its weight. Hearing how he took it from someone else and it was meaningless because it was not what he can do, it was not this thing, this thing, this thing that I have. And I let it go because I know where it goes.
And where it goes is not anywhere I am interested in. Where it goes is awkwardness, and caution, and broken glass. It goes to wondering how much you can say and what you can do and where the lines are, it goes to paying attention and I am not interested in any of that, because that’s not what he does to me. What he does to me is freedom, not repression. He gives me light, not heavy and I am not so naïve to think that people want to know when they do that, when the very knowledge of them is a lever. I am not so stupid. I know how things work, and how they work is this: I keep it, it’s for me and only me and if I don’t give it to him then he can’t take it away, and if I don’t tell him he can’t take it away and I will never have to see that look, that look that is sorrow and oh no and the worst, confusion. And I get to have my hope, and my happiness, and my youth, and when I see him with other people it does not actually kill me because he doesn’t know, and he still doesn’t know and not knowing keeps it that far from the root of the actual evil, which is my heart. And if I keep it from my heart then really, really then, everything really will be all right.
posted by machine central at 12:05 PM
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