backlit

"And maybe I just set aside the fact that you were broken-hearted..."
-Alkaline Trio, Sorry About That

It's quite obvious to me that I've changed.  Can you tell?  I'm not even sure you care, or even keep up.  But just in case, let me fill you in.

I occasionally look back on entries I've written and it's almost as if I'm reading a different person's diary.  Not only does my memory fail me, causing me to forget my writing over the years, but I've realized my tone has changed dramatically since I first began recording my thoughts.  It seems my heart has failed me as well.

Naturally, things will change over the course of seven years but I always hoped the changes would be positive, that I'd be able to chronicle the beneficial shifts in my life, my maturity, my growth.  I never thought I'd end up writing down my decline and detailing my death.

I was nineteen and new.  I was slightly cynical but who doesn't have a little angst at that age?  The difference between me then and me now was the me then had a bit of hope hiding underneath the negativity.  I had a vision of better things.  I looked to the future to save me from my small town and from myself.  I knew I didn't belong and it was only a matter of time before I could escape and get out and be the me that I knew was deep down inside, hidden in the shame and secrecy and gossip of the town.  Thinking about the day when I'd be able to rid myself of small-minded conservatives and immerse myself in a world of art and culture helped me get through the days.  And so did you.

I had something to look forward to each day when I woke up and wanted to sink my head further into the pillow, grasping at the sheets and burying myself in them.  I had my future to focus on and I had you to talk to.  I was naive and free from the world's pain.  I was sad but I was not consumed by it.  There was a spark there, a light in my eyes, a dream of something better on the horizon.  I was only wading in the water of worry, not yet drowning.

There was so much potential back then as well.  So much passion for other people, for my art, for my writing.  I thought I was a drawer.  I used it to calm myself when I was stressed.  And then I began stressing about my drawings.  For whatever reason, I became obsessed with being better than I was capable of and no charcoal sketch was sufficient, no portrait was perfect.  I needed another outlet.  Blogging was just becoming popular at the time so I thought I'd give it a shot.  And that's how I discovered writing.  That's how I discovered you.

Sometimes I'll read through an old entry of mine and it saddens me to see how much I've changed, how much I've declined.  Do you see it, too?  Have you  noticed how all the good has seeped out of me like my skin has sprung a leak, how the spark is dimming, how the light is falling out of my eyes?  I'm shriveling up in the fetal position, shedding everything I thought was important, losing the love and the talent, going out just as blank as I came in.

I think about my transformation and feel astounded how much we can change, how our hearts and minds can be molded by the smallest of events, how music and people and environments can shape who we are as humans.  How we unintentionally shape ourselves.  How we unintentionally shape each other, hurt each other, kill each other.  I think about those changes a lot.  I think about the long drives at night, the songs we shared, the conversations, how you navigated the blood and the bone to get to the meat of me.  I think about the poems I wrote for you and how I hoped you were happy.  I think about how special you were to me, how I put so much energy into trying to express the things I felt for you.

I still think about you a lot.  Just not like that anymore. 

What changed me?  Who changed me?  It was everything, big and small.  It was people and places an the lack thereof.  It was college and my douche bag roommate and the people who thought they were too good for me and the ones who looked down on me and who wrote me off as a hick or a loser, as mediocre or high strung.  And you certainly played your role.  You changed me in the worst possible way.  You destroyed everything good I ever believed in.  You destroyed everything good about me.  You completely obliterated the person I was and you left this nasty sore of a person that I am now.  But worry  not.  I actually blame myself.

I think you could have been beneficial to me but I just didn't allow it.  I was too distracted to see what was in front of me all along: a good thing.  And maybe that's why I never tried, always held myself back.  You could have helped me.  You could have pulled out all of the talent and drive and passion within me.  You could have set it all on fire and made me something wonderful.  I couldn't allow that for myself.  I had to punish myself when no one else would.  I wasn't deserving of you, of anything.  I had so much hate for myself.  Still do.  And I'm still not sure why.  Conditioning, perhaps.

But despite my limitations I put on you and I, you still left and it hurt me a great deal.  In fact, you played a part in killing me.  What little was left of me after college was snuffed out by you via your negligence.  It's because of you I can't feel anything good for anyone else.  It's because of you that I don't even believe in friendship.  As close as I thought we were, if you could leave me, then anyone else can, too.  And a lot of people have.  But no one hurt me like you did.  You left a flood of numbness in your wake, a tingly nothingness that flushes throughout my body on a daily basis, a niggling reminder that I am just hollow now.  My heart breaks every time you pass my mind.   You twirl around so callously inside me, slicing through me with every spin, separating me from myself, taking away the bits and pieces that encompass my existence.

It's gotten to the point where I'm not sure I even want to have any connection with you.  It's gotten to the point where I don't think I want to ever see or talk to you again.  Not because I'm angry but because I am still that hurt by it all.  I just can't bear to see your face, can't bear to listen to you talk about loving someone else.  I'm not furious or even bitter.  I'm still sore, still exposed.  It's a wound that hast yet to heal, even after all of these years.  I am filleted.  My nerves are cut open. 

I long for the days when we were something, when we were talking and were friends and laughing, playing and connecting, actually face to face and touching.  But those days are done, shut down forever and we both know we can't reclaim it.  It's the hurt of who you are now coupled with the pain of prodding the memories of you to go away.  But they won't.  They stubbornly suck away at my vitality, draining me until I am dizzy with pain.

And I often wonder where all that went.  Is it just me or does it feel like it suddenly shifted in an instant, that it went from great to devastating like a clap of thunder?  All the years of talking and laughing and sharing ourselves and building up to what?  Throwing us away like there was never anything there in the first place?  All the time and energy that we invested into each other and it feels like it doesn't mean anything.  I have a hard time dealing with that.  I suspect I will for a while.

You were the last person I loved.  And you are the last.  I can't do it anymore because of you.  I've lost all capacity to care.  And it seems so over dramatic, believe me, I know.  You left one day.  You simply stopped talking to me.  It's not like you intentionally hurt me.  It's not like you cussed me out and told me how scummy you thought I was.  You did not degrade me.  You only disappeared but I guess that was enough.  Maybe I'm blowing things way out of proportion.  Maybe I'm being over dramatic.  Maybe I'm too emotional, thought more of us than you did.  Maybe I'm just completely screwed up.  It's hard for me to remember that you were as well.  That's why you had to go.  I try to understand it but what I can't understand is why you didn't even say goodbye, why you didn't at least let me know that you were going to tuck yourself away from the world.

I know you were hurting.  So was I.  And I needed you more than I ever did when you left.  And if you would have simply said goodbye, I could have held out for you, toughened up and waited for your return.  Instead, my life was crumbling around me and then you weren't there to keep me from falling apart.  I try not to be selfish, try to remember your pain but does that mean I should negate my own?  Does that mean you get to negate my own?

None of this probably had anything to do with me.  I can't help but to take it personally, though, when you simply walk out without any explanation and then give a half-hearted apology several months later, like you had simply forgotten to text me back.  It's not like you were an inconvenience.  You were devastation.  And how you quickly gave up when I didn't come running back to you like I wasn't hurting as well.  And how you were more upset over another relationship than you were over me.  How you kept mentioning it over and over and never said a word about me.  How do you think it made me feel?  It was another hot poker in my heart.  Maybe I'm not so much upset over how you exited my life but how you made what in my eyes felt like little to no effort to get back in.

I've tried to take into consideration your feelings, how you must have been really messed up to shut out the world.  And I'm getting there but did you ever try to consider my feelings?  Did you ever wonder how I wondered why you left without so much as a goodbye?  One line in an e-mail doesn't work with me.  I needed to know you're sorry, not just read it. 

Maybe we were both wronged and maybe we were both wrong and maybe we both blew things out of proportion but I came to you to try to squash any awkwardness between us.  Whoever was at fault didn't matter to me anymore.

You see, I needed to try to make things better.  Even after you killed me, you left a sickness that's been eating away at me ever since. A disease born in my kind of death, a thick rotting plague that finishes off the victim, slowly eating away at the body and the mind until true death is finally met.  I thought I could stop it by trying to make amends, to come to you humbly and respectfully and put everything that happened behind us and try to start over, try to re-establish some semblance of the friendship we once had.  I knew it would never be the same but I thought I'd give it some effort.

You didn't seem that interested.  I suppose it's because you've been consumed by another.  Your concentration has been laser-focused on someone else's heart.  I couldn't blame you but it didn't help matters, only served to reinforce the notion that I wasn't as important as I thought.   What did I matter when you had some other guy to love and start over with? 

I wonder how long it will last.  I wonder how long I'll think of you and long for you.  I wonder if you think of me and if I'm just being completely ridiculous.  I tend to do that, you know.  But I can't help feeling what I do.  So I wonder if there will ever be a true resolution.  Will we ever be okay again?  Or will you heal with another while I continue to allow the sickness to spread far and wide across my torso, wriggling its way to my head, waiting for the day when I can either find some piece or blow my head to pieces.

I'm not even the same person anymore.  Maybe you wouldn't even like me.  But I do think you deserve to know what you did, the monster of a man that you helped to create.  Of course, I have to take some responsibility for myself and I do.  Believe me.  I do.  I always remember to remind myself that I am shit, that I did some of this to myself as well.

I see all the potential good in me fading away.  All the promise has left.  There's just nothing, emptied out empathy, hollow heartache.

You turned your back on me and then I turned my back on you, turned my back on what we used to be.  I keep trying to walk away, to put some distance between us but I'm still backlit by the good times, warmed by the glow of good memories.  But when I think of you, all I can do is shudder.

I really do wish things could be good between us, even if they can't be how they used to be.  But that's the kind of thinking I used to do when I was nineteen and new, when I was alive, when I was on fire.  But you helped to put all that out.  You destroyed me so thoroughly that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to articulate it.  I'll never be able to get you to understand.  But I guess that's my problem to deal with.  You've moved on or at the very least, you will soon.  You'll be happy with another and I'll still be here, right where you left me all those years ago, wondering where you went, when you'll come back, and if I'll be able to hang on in the meantime.