Quickly, it happens
so softly, like falling asleep
You wake up and realize you’re OK and when did that happen?
You’ll begin to try and pin-point the moment you started living again. You’ll give up after 5 seconds because the flashing whirlwind of memories don’t really mean anything.
They don’t mean anything in an abstract sense — it simply ceased mattering. You’ll try to remember the things you’ve forgotten. The kind of things you promised yourself you’d never forget: like the fact that he hated tomatoes (or was it cucumbers?), like the sound of his laugh or the glint in her eyes, or just the kind of things you used to talk about.
You’ll begin enjoying morning walks that aren’t about running away. You’ll begin drinking your whiskey and actually pausing to inhale the nuances, instead of toasting the memories away. You’ll begin imagining future scenarios in which you’d run into each other, and instead of all the things that hurt, instead of telling them how much they hurt you, you imagine speechlessness. Somehow, the things you wanted to say so they could (theoretically) feel the same hurt you did, doesn’t really matter anymore.
Your intentions have changed. Your intentions towards yourself have changed. They are no longer the beginning and the ending. You’ve somehow come out on top. You’ve somehow become the protagonist. Your character arc has arched into an incandescent rainbow. The songs and stories have all lied — you did not change or become better or stronger or move on. You simply woke up and realized, it did not matter.
Your world shifted.
The strings holding you to your past were snipped; cleanly, neatly. They lie around your feet like ribbons: artistic vines twining you to your past.
You imagine them saying, “I did love you, you know”.
You imagine yourself replying, “Yes. I know. And I loved you, too. Once. I loved you and I missed you and I mourned you and I love you. I look at you and I see the boy I kissed — ugly brown pants and plaid shirts. Longboard held loosely by the side. The way you held my hand with one hand on the wheel, driving towards the mountains. I look at you and I see the memories and I loved you too. But I realized that who I loved was never you. I loved the memory of you. I loved the imaginary you. I loved who I had made you out to be. And I still love him. This boy that I never really knew. This boy that was never really alive. And I think, maybe, I will always love him. But somehow, along the way, I began to discern reality from fantasy and somehow, I woke up and I was fine.
Quickly, it happened. Softly, like falling asleep.”
