July 1st, 2023. I’ll tell you guys about that day some other time.
And yes, I’m talking about that them. I really want to tell you their name, just because it’s a really cool name, but I know better (there are times when I think to myself something like Wow, their name is ______, I’m painfully in love with someone named _____). I wish I could show you the photo of them burning an American flag on the day Trump was inaugurated, years that feel like forever before I met them—or just a photo of them, because they’re insanely beautiful. But I’ll just call them ______, that’s actually easier than the clunky phrase I was using to refer to them—thanks Markdown, you piece of fucking shit.
So yeah, July 1st was the last day I saw them. The fight that was the last time they would ever talk to me was July 16th. Their birthday.
It’s April 25th. Soon it will be—uhhh—10 months. I think I started counting at 3 or 4 or 5 months—it had to be after they unfriended me on Facebook in November, because that’s when the last breath of hope left my lungs. That’s probably when I started counting.
If the Voyager probes could think and feel (this happens to be the premise of a pretty awesome Russian doom metal album) it would be something like this. Just counting as the immeasurable distance becomes a bit more immeasurable.
I like to think it fucking means something that almost a year later I still feel this pain in my chest. I like to think maybe it fucking means something that I still see their old photos everywhere I go in this fucking city where I almost found them.
Who do you love, or who did you love, more than anything? It could be a parent, a grandparent, a sibling, a spouse, a boyfriend or girlfriend or whatever, a dog or a cat, a childhood friend, a stuffed animal—anyone or anything. Think of a happy memory—you almost certainly have one but if you don’t that’s OK and you’ll find out why in just a minute.
Now that I think of it, is it normal to have happy memories? Even just one. I think a lot about that scene in Blade Runner 2049—if you don’t know what I’m talking about watch the fucking movie, it’s awesome.
Because I ~~have~~ had none of those things, before I met ______.
I never loved my parents. I never felt anything for any of the people I was told were my family. I actually hated or vaguely disliked them. I remember when I was like 10 or something, my older half-brother almost died because he got in a fight and got stabbed, and I wanted him to die, probably because he was a source of derision between my parents as long as I’d been alive.
My probably earliest memory is of my father screaming his fucking head off at me, only 4 or 5 years old probably, in his powder blue custom car that was kinda like a VW Bug, because I wouldn’t smile for a picture. I had won some sort of contest thingie and he had worked so hard to help me with it and they wanted to take my picture for the newspaper because this was the ‘90s and I refused to smile for the photo and I guess they didn’t like that.
I wonder why I didn’t want to smile for that photo.
I also remember more than once locking my parents out of the house. I was a very smart little fucker before I just started checking out only a couple years into grade school. I waited for both of them to be outside at the same time and then wham!, wham!, wham!, I locked all the fucking doors.
I’m pretty sure it had something to do with my parents’ divorce when I was like 9 years old.
It was around that same time that my father almost died of several heart attacks. I think I was only scared of my mother, and the Bakersfield, CA tweakers that were “her side of the family.” (Later on my mother would kinda try to encourage me to be myself and rebel against my father’s stupid fucking weird shit like not letting me wear skinny jeans, but idk).
And then I was homeschooled thru middle and high school. That fucked me up so hard and I don’t even remember 90% of those fucking years.
But I’m veering off-script, so to speak.
The happiest memories of my entire life are memories of them—them inviting me on a drive to Vancouver, WA to pick up insulation, and then falling asleep next to me, in the car, while they were showing me videos on YouTube. Hearing their favorite song for the first time (The Last Lost Continent by La Dispute) on a longish drive on the freeway (I fucking loved driving places with them) to their plug’s house to pick up for me. Telling them over the phone that I got them a tiny spoon for their tiny spoon collection and hearing them go Yyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaay like a happy 7 year old.
The thing that hurts the most—the thing that feels like such a hard punch in the gut—is that I will never know them. I didn’t cry when my mother died but I’ve cried thinking about things they’ve told me about their life, and none of that fucking matters. I’ve never cared so much about someone. And now they’re gone.
I’ve moved on in a way because I’m not going to try contacting them anymore—I know that I either make them uncomfortable, or they hate me.
But I still haven’t let go and I don’t believe I will. Nobody understands when I say they really were that special to me.
I know there was a time when they actually liked being friends with me, before I fucked everything up. They even used to give me hugs. And then I became clingy, obsessive, and weird. They only got to know the real me on a few occasions, and then I became a fucking weirdo.
I hate that I don’t even get to know if they’re OK. Last I heard of them, was about them having a seizure while they were hanging out with a mutual friend a couple months ago. Someone stole their car and basically totaled it by burning the clutch out and I don’t know if they had it repaired, or whatever.
And I have to live with the shame—that I’m the one who makes them so uncomfortable that they don’t post on Reddit anymore because I followed their account (and they were OK with this before, but I understand)—that I don’t get to be friends with them anymore.
I hold onto this little shred of hope that maybe one day I’ll see them again. I don’t think that’s going to happen, and the world feels so bleak.
There’s some other things I wanted to say but this has gotten really fucking long and I haven’t slept and I had to lobotomize myself with 200mg of seroquel a minute ago.