Momento

        It's true, I wanted someone who wants to learn. Someone focused on self-improvement. Someone, who takes criticizism as recontextualization. Someone, who likes being self aware. Someone, who doesn't mind being a little rough around the edges. They're smart. They play it cool. They understand the importance of collectivenness and unity, yet they're not afraid to be the most proud of things that make them "different."

        I never fully learned the importance of, or how to, use language in a way that doesn't offend others. (I forgot, it's nice to be coddled.) Though, I don't think that should discount one, entirely.

        But it all becomes obvious, all I wanted was a mirror, wasn't it?

        Growing up isolated robs you of a chance to feel connected to the world, but it's always a good practice to get up and try again. My doctor told me I should reach out. I don't remember if I agreed. I only remember smiling at her, painfully.

        I'll never be a writer, or a poet. I think I'm too crude, too one-note. I think I'm destined to be a paraphraser. Here is an excerpt of "The Long and Short of It" by Richard Siken, which I only previously knew by the last paragraph.

        "I work my jobs, I take my pills. Knot the tie and go to work, unknot the tie and go to sleep. I sleep. I dream. I wake. I sing. I get out the hammer and start knocking in the wooden pegs that affix the meaning to the landscape, the inner life to the body, the names to the things. I float too much to wander, like you, in the real world. I envy it but that’s the dealio—you’re a train and I’m a trainstation and when I try to guess your trajectory I end up telling my own story.
        But you are my nomad and I love you sideways daily. Sideways because I have to beam my love in all directions, hoping it bounces off something and eventually finds you. You and all the other secret agents carooming underneath the radar, sending your documents back to Mission Control—which is me, I guess, because I have a permanent address.
        I’ve been rereading your story. I think it’s about me in a way that might not be flattering, but that’s okay. We dream and dream of being seen as we really are and then finally someone looks at us and sees us truly and we fail to measure up. Anyway: story received, story included. You looked at me long enough to see something mysterioso under all the gruff and bluster. Thanks. Sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them."

        I know you don't like me for who I am, but I like me. I like being proved wrong, and I like proving others wrong. I think you're like that, too, abet, still the latter before the former.

        I just want to do something you're proud of, and I'm trying to hit the bullseye. I'd forgotten if it was harder, or easier, to make someone proud of you by following in their every footstep. I always interpreted our story as someone who was trying everything to detach, and someone who was trying everything but to let go.

        What I'm trying to say is, I recognize we'll always be different, but you'll always be someone I admire.

        I think, what you were trying to say was, that I wanted someone who doesn't mind being pushed. It makes me wonder, hard. So, what, if I want it to be true?

        So, I'll give up. Though, it's like an addiction. I relapse. I need breaks to build my endurance. I stear clear of the avenues I used to get my fix. Lose the numbers of my dealers. At least, until I fill my life with other things right up to the brim. To walk out with potentially, a new, different, addiction.

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A song for you. And, another song.

_{Did you catch these themes?: (broken) glass, transparency, reflections, mirrors, misdirection, similarities, disrepair.}