Look at that... I haven't changed at all, have I? Five, seven, nine years and I haven't changed a fucking bit. I'm everything that I ever was except more so. More lazy, more misanthropic, more shy, more difficult, more afraid, more desperate. It's so easy to make resolutions and follow through when we're teenagers. People telling us what to do makes it all the more urgent to do what we want to do. But now no one tells me what to do... so I don't do anything at all.
I was talking to Brian the other day. He asked me what was so hard about this email. "Why is it impossible for you to just chill the fuck out and deal with her naturally?" he asked me.
He's right. Everything that I remember is from years ago. We've talked since, certainly. My grasp on exact timelines is weak further back than about four years, but I'm certain we've talked about all of the weirdness and unhappiness several times, and I've definitely asked forgiveness at least twice, and been given it.
But it doesn't matter. I, who never regret anything, who am so unfamiliar with guilt that it took me this long just to realize that was what I was feeling - I've never forgiven myself for how I treated her. For everything I did on purpose and worse, all the mistakes I made out of simple ignorance. Some part of me is convinced that it's so far removed from her by now that my confusion, my guilt, my stupid inability to get over it and deal with her normally here and now - all of this must be utterly unfathomable to her. It's as if when I try to talk or write to her I'm shouting through a thick fog that I can't shake. I can't see properly or hear myself, and so I raise my voice - but the fog only exists for me. On the other side she's standing there wondering why I'm making such a big deal out of it. Wondering why I'm shouting, why I look like I'm blind.
Like it says up there: "You're not in the dark. I swim... in clouds of my own make."
I don't know how to break through. I don't know how to forgive myself for not understanding her right, for breaking promises, for lashing out, for stupid things that happened when I was sixteen and that now I can't for whatever reason get over. I don't know how to smile and say that my life is fine, my new house is beautiful, my job is ridiculously cool, and how are you? Where do I start?
It's like trying to build on a field full of immovable rubble. I can't clear it all away and start again, look at her like I never knew her before and be just myself and not me hobbled by the helpless sixteen-year-old I was, and get to know her again without all this bullshit baggage. And I can't work off of this basis. I can't make what I did and didn't do better. I can't forget and I don't know how to forgive myself.
It's so narcissistic... to be unable to see someone because you can't see past yourself. And yet even with me as fucking infuriating and helpless and feckless as I can be in her presence, her company is as fantastic as it always was. I miss her every day. Her comment below made my heart ache. I wish beyond everything else that I could just get the fuck over whatever my deal is and be her friend again, as confident and happy as I was when I first knew her. Wish I could just speak simply and not second-guess everything I say. I wish I could see her and know she's happy and her life is good and so maybe I don't have to feel guilty anymore. I wish I could convince my subconscious that it's as idiotic as she probably thinks I am.
I wish I could say I was sorry back then, when it mattered, instead of now, and two years ago, and four years ago. I wish I knew exactly what I should be sorry for and what's just me being crazy.
I wish I knew if I was even making sense.
Sara, I wish you were here.
I can't wait to figure out what's wrong with me
So I can say "this is the way that I used to be."
posted by Rivaine # 3:18 PM 
