a little life

[mysweetheartjude]

"Jude," Harold says to him, quietly. "My poor Jude. My poor sweetheart." And with that, he starts to cry, for no one has ever called him sweetheart, not since Brother Luke.

[mysweetheartjude]

That he died thinking he owed us an apology is worse; that he died still stubbornly believing everything he was taught about himself —after you, after me, after all of us who loved him —makes me think that my life has been a failure after all, that I failed at the one thing that counted.

[mysweetheartjude]

But his friendship with Jude made him feel that there was something real and immutable about who he was, that despite his life of guises, there was something elemental about him, something that Jude saw even when he could not, as if Jude’s very witness of him made him real.

[mysweetheartjude]

And, of course, there is the person you come back to: his face and body and voice and scent and touch, his way of waiting until you finish whatever you’re saying, no matter how lengthy, before he speaks, the way his smile moves so slowly across his face that it reminds you of moonrise, how clearly he has missed you and how clearly happy he is to have you back.

[mysweetheartjude]

“Jude,” Harold had said, “it will get better. I swear. I swear. It won’t seem like it now, but it will.”

[mysweetheartjude]

It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

[mysweetheartjude]

Since then, Willem has held him in the same way every night, even through July, when not even the air-conditioning could erase the heaviness from the air, and when they both woke damp with sweat. This, he realizes, is what he wanted from a relationship all along. This is what he meant when he hoped he might someday be touched

[mysweetheartjude]

And, of course, there is the person you come back to: his face and body and voice and scent and touch, his way of waiting until you finish whatever you’re saying, no matter how lengthy, before he speaks, the way his smile moves so slowly across his face that it reminds you of moonrise, how clearly he has missed you and how clearly happy he is to have you back.

[mysweetheartjude]

My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.

[mysweetheartjude]

It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

[mysweetheartjude]

At night, he prayed to a god he didn't believe in, and hadn't for years: Help me, help me, help me, he pleaded. He was losing himself; this had to stop. he couldn't keep running forever.

[mysweetheartjude]

"This is what you get", said the voice inside his head. "This is what you get for pretending to be someone you know you’re not, for thinking you’re as good as other people."

[mysweetheartjude]

That night, once he was alone, he cried as well: not because of what he had done but because he hadn't been successful, because he had lived after all.

[mysweetheartjude]

He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship.

[mysweetheartjude]

he feels he isn’t so much living as he is merely existing

[mysweetheartjude]

And yet, he reminds himself, loneliness is not hunger, or deprivation, or illness: it is not fatal. Its eradication is not owed him.

[mysweetheartjude]

Merely existing is difficult enough