...say or do.
I can resist anything but
The temptation from you.
But I'd rather walk alone
Then chase you around
I'd rather fall myself then let you
Drag me on down.
It wouldn't have worked out anyway...
And now it's just another lonely day.

I barely wrote about Aaron before he arrived, and I didn't write about him while he was here. It's been so hard to understand how I feel about him - what I saw, what moved me, what it became and what it provoked in me, where it went and what it left behind.

I seem to have a habit of falling in love with people who don't exist. Heh... my polite understatements aren't necessary here. I constantly fall in love with fictional people and I always have. When you're a child dreaming of Ged or Will Stanton or Link or Arthur it doesn't harm anything. When I grew old enough to conjure imaginary heroes of my own, after my own lights of nobility and beauty, it began to pain me. It's a powerful image, I can't help but think in retrospect: a young girl crying herself to sleep because she believes so intensely in her own white knight that every waking moment in a world that actively denies his existence is murderous. There was a time when the world's failure to live up to my dreams made me physically ill. You see... even looking back I can summon some of the overdramatic passion that characterizes adolescence. I'm not sure whether or not I've left that behind, and I'm not sure whether or not I want to.

These days it manifests in subtleties... those devilish details they're always talking about. These days I work not from whole cloth but from life, embroidering from basic principles and mundane information about a person an expansive landscape, a Weaveworld to fall into and become lost. These days I fall in love with the man I believe a boy could become, with the beauty I imagine speaking his words, with the person I expected and the things I hoped he'd say. Needless to say... this is far more painful. I expect disappointment; one could say I actively court it at times. I love my own fictions far better knowing they're false.

So it is that most of my loves end in caveats: I love Jeremy... when he smiles, when he writes, when he plays. I love Brock... when he's sweet, when he's brilliant, when he's inspired and inspires me. I love Aaron... what nascent sprout of strength and imagination hides in him. Brendon is the only man I've ever met who was everything I dreamed and more, who lives up to his own fictions.

How can I mourn a person who doesn't exist? How can I miss someone who was never here to begin with? What do I say to you when you leave, how do I say goodbye when I don't even know where you belong or where you are? How do I tell you I love you when I don't know if you're the person I love, if you will ever be or can ever be?

But I do. I love you, or loved you, or will love you. I miss you. You tried so hard not to belong and not to make waves and not to carve a place for yourself, and somehow you surprised us all - even yourself - by belonging so quietly and simply that I was shocked at how much your absence hurt us. I didn't know how to beg you to stay. I didn't know I needed to.

If you came back it would be the same. You would irritate me and frustrate me and make me laugh. You would ask me to clarify the way I talk without ever seeming to resent having to ask, and never seem ashamed of what you have and what you are. You would surprise me with sudden demonstrations of affection that remind me of little boys who pushed me down in kindergarten and ran away laughing, thinking that was enough to convey your love. You would still be inconsiderate and it would still hurt. I would still forgive you, because it would still be completely unintentional. You would be content with your ignorance and your simplicity and it would still make me want to scream. You would smile and give me a steady, unavoidable eye and it would still make me grin. You would still be my friend - just that.

My friend left at five in the morning on Sunday. His quiet panic in the hours before he did hurt my heart, and I didn't know what to say. I didn't tell him I loved him. I didn't tell him I'd miss him. I'm sorry.

I do.

Yesterday seems like a life ago
Because the one I loved
Today I hardly know
You I held so close in my
Heart, oh dear
Grow further from me with every
Falling tear
Further along we just may...
But for now it's just another
Lonely day.

Labels: Aaron, Apologies, Missing You