Farewells and Welfare

I just came over to say that I am leaving. I thought you should hear it from me. I wanted you to know that I care deeply about you and your family and the causes you champion. I wanted to thank you for the times you supported me and the answers to all my endless questions.

I had something to tell you but I couldn’t manage to say it. Somehow it just didn’t seem like the right time. I’m not sure what it was but I know it was left unsaid. I hugged you goodbye just the same.

We talked about the old days and said the names out loud and still never talked about it. Each one of us talking, in turn, one after the other, but somehow I was supposed to be looking at the flowers instead. There’s something in us that makes the other one wrong over nothing and I don’t know what that is but that’s not the part I miss.

We move in and out of conversation and observation and the animals react to our energies, the conflict shows up in the way they don’t want to play. Not our tones, or our faces. Our words are lies wrapped in love, a sour candy middle with a squishy coating that crunches on the outside. We want to love. We try.

In the end what is unsaid takes up so much room in my gut I can’t eat much. A few bites here and there, squeezing their way past the lump in my throat. It’s enough to keep me alive. The bare minimum makes its way down, winding through passages coated with a slick substance that prevents nutrients from being absorbed.

It just flies by, skating past the places it is needed to fly out at the wrong moment in a place that can’t contain it. There’s something there. Some nugget of truth. But I can’t digest it. Can’t get it to break down enough to feed my hunger. It’s like I’m behind glass. Or it’s in a window cage. I’m not sure. But I can’t reach it from here.

We all want something. Maybe the same things. Maybe not. But we can’t articulate it and we sit nearby, hoping somehow to break through. Waiting for the sign. Making little comments that refer to it without saying it directly. The peripheral vision of our words just barely brushing by it on the way to say something else. Something safe.

When did we become afraid to connect? What is it we are so afraid of? If I could read your mind would I know? Or are you just not sure? If I could plant my thoughts in your head for you to see firsthand would you understand then? Or is it just unspoken from us all? I want to know what it is you hide.

Maybe then, transparent, elucid. Maybe open. Could be real. Perhaps in a flash or slowly in drips and drops. The heat of recognition. The power of asking the one thing you need to know. The relief of the answer. The knowing. It dispels all doubt. Maybe this. The certainty. Maybe we avoid it at all costs but it calls us still. We need to know. Not one of us asks. None.

What is that hesitation? Is it performance? Polite theater. A show of solidarity. The bickering of closeness. The silence of the solitary. There is a language we both speak. A system of symbols and gestures. Words cannot open what is closed. The heart knows time as rhythm. This is the space between the beat. The uptake. Here we wait.

It occurs to me now that the interest shown for my items of special interest were never about those things that excite me. They were about me, myself, and somehow that makes me furious. How dare you pretend to care about that to get close to me? Tricks and tricks. You would think it would be the other way around. I would. And it isn’t.

I wanted it to be about me. I wanted it to be about anything but me. I wanted it to be.

The places where we intersect. Why we feel drawn or repulsed. The magnets that pull us forth from our reverie to connect. Careening off the edges, coming to rest in the eddies of a bay where the shapes correspond. Life calling out to life. I see you! I feel seen.

Friendship is a river and my heart is a raft. The flags are waving and the waters are high. Will you make the crossing? There is tea and sympathy on the other side side. The stories are waiting for you to tell them, the time has come. Find your way. We need you.