#feh@this

[write-my-words]

filtered those thoughts to get all the microbes out.

All right. I was writing my last entry from the murky depths of my feelings at the time. It's not that I said anything I don't feel but more like I didn't communicate it correctly.

I know that in some way you love(d) me.

Maybe not in the same way I love you.

Saying that I didn't know so would probably be hurtful if you could read it. It was said in anger and woe.

What I actually am angry about is that it feels like you took out a piece of me and never traded me a piece of your own so I had something to fill it with. It's like you found a way to pull off a piece of my spirit like taffy and keep it restlessly wandering the maze-like halls of your music box heart for eternity, looking for a way home.

What I actually am angry about is that you waited so long. What I actually am angry about is that I saw a few threads of your heart stitched onto your sleeve for other people and *I wanted that*. What I actually am angry about is that time and time again we had forces pulling us apart like flaky layers of a cinnamon roll, and while I was out there taking it seriously and acting like every time it happened might really be the last, you seemed to be acting like you had all the time in the world to gather your thoughts. That's why I always pushed to hear them, however disorganized and rushed.

I wanted other people who I had never heard of to know that I meant something to you, and I wanted to know that that was happening. I wanted you to leave me something so that I could look back and know exactly what I meant to you. Jen, intentionally or not, said things directly to me about how very very alike we were, in a way that made me feel that maybe you only liked me as a cheap "fan edition" of her, missing premium features. So the fact that you ended up with her (even if it wasn't your choice and I don't understand), and I never even knew what part of you I had, felt like it just reinforced that feeling of spending years and years being something good enough until your fate could afford her instead. Like maybe that's why these supposed long-labored writings and things you had to give me never materialized-- because you were hoping for a different day in which you didn't have to give them to me.

You would tell me that's not the case. I'm just saying that I never felt like I actually knew what I meant to you and I wanted you to give me evidence.

And now it might be too late for all that? I said "never too late, even in death" and I stand by that but you know what I mean. (Probably.) I'm angry that I might never get that closure *and I will never even know one way or the other unless it happens*, I'm angry that I've never had something to hold to while I'm hurting. I'm angry that you put something off that would have done wonders for my sanity and my heart and if it exists I don't know if it will ever find its way to me, complete or no. Per your last email you STILL said you were working on something for me. I've been put into stasis over this.

Most people would call eight years of complete ghosting a pretty definitive "no". You conditioned me to hope otherwise.

Oh if I could go back and sit you and my younger self down, I could explain to you both what she was actually feeling and thinking. I didn't have the words for it then and I'm angry about that too.

music: drip, drip, drip

mood: the clarity that daylight brings

[write-my-words]

i did a ritual for you.

You once told Kristina that your birthday was a complicated question: there was the date others had picked for you and then a small range of possible dates you had narrowed down for yourself. So I went with a date in the middle of the date range you gave. I used everything red. Even some of the reddest part of myself.

It started as a happy birthday remembrance. Then it became a petition for some kind of undeniable sign or contact from you. Physically if you're still alive and spiritually if you're not.

I still love you and I would still talk to you in a microsecond. I value every memory of you I have and I'm still pissed about the ones that were taken from me.

But man, you really threw me for a whole ass loop. Every time I thought I knew something about where we stood I ended up finding out something that left me feeling that I didn't know jack shit. I was never really honest with you about how badly that hurt me. It still does, it can still make me cry myself to sleep almost a decade after your last email and now with a whole new life. Ask me, I've done it plenty this summer.

I always prioritized your feelings over mine. We can all can say what we want about that but it was one thing that consistently kept you coming back. The problem is, you either also prioritized yours over mine AND/OR never shared enough for me to know what was going on. Towards the end of my (ninja)rope I, taken aback, admitted to even one of the teeth on the hacksaw you put through my heart and you lost your shit at me. We never really recovered, did we. I admit my faults now that I have a fully formed brain. Sometimes I do have a touch of my mom's covert narcissism, where I have a bit of a hero/pedestal complex going on. I'm not proud of that and I actually frequently remind myself I'm not better than anybody. But I have also learned that I need to step up, be honest with myself, and be forward about what I've*worked for* and *earned*.

Just... Did you ever love me, at all? Like, really actually love me? You said you did. I believed you did. But, if I may be so blunt here, you were either one obtuse procrastinator of a dude or you were lying and using me. And the thing is, I guess I could be thankful that you didn't take me up on it because you and I both know I would have let you use me so much more.

You had practically a whole LJ about T and your feelings. You live(d) in a house with J and everyone knew you had countless memories with her. All that's fine. But, like... Did you ever even talk about me? Did I even exist in your sphere outside of our AIM messages and phone calls? A couple people said you wrote things about me. You said on probably at least a dozen occasions that you had things you were working on/writing *for* me. I never saw any of this. How do I know it ever existed as more than a pretty passing thought to appease the conversation at the time?

I guess writing about someone doesn't mean that you love them, or you can love someone and not talk about them, but I dunno. That just doesn't fit your pattern.

And guess what? I'm another Cuil abstraction of reality away from being able to talk to any of those people anymore, and I have NOTHING but hopeful thinking for what maybe was. If you're dead, all the things you waited so long to send me could be out of my field of perception forever. If you're not dead, where the fuck have you been?

I just wish to god I had beautiful cryptic words about me to look back on in my moments of darkness instead of jealously reading other people's leftovers and wishing it were my name in there like some kind of psychotic mad lib. I have one poem you wrote for me and otherwise the closest things I have are my old logs of Vega and a persona making me feel better. They were the placeholders for everything I needed you to be.

Yeah, I'm a little bitter about it tbh. Salty even. Yeah, it makes me so sad that I become angry and then circle back around to being sad because I'm so angry.

I wouldn't ever take back a single second of anything on my part, I just think we might both agree that I earned more from you than I got. If I were to receive an unmarked package left at my door tomorrow, a mystery link to a blog from a disposable email, fucking tarot cards falling out of my deck in such a way as to form a cohesive story, a goddamn love letter written in the post-shower steam on the bathroom mirror, it would save me. Never too late, even dead.

music: space - magic wands

mood: the energy under cover of darkness