Everlasting Corner

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Every once in a while I build up the nerve to email him. To try to put into words the feelings I’ve buried inside the past months, but not to type them outright. Hints at my pain, of losing him and of missing him, striving not to sound pathetic and hoping this time he’ll write back.

I write, hoping that I can re-forge the bond of loving friendship that we had in elementary school, when we were together, and happy-go-lucky, and completely unaware that our promises would soon come to mean nothing.

But as I type my thoughts, and whimsical ideas, and add quietly that I miss him, a lot, there’s a lurking shadow in the back of the room that is my brain and it whispers into the open space.

“He’s too busy. He doesn’t miss you as much as you miss him. Sometimes he forgets he knew a girl with your name. He sits and laughs with new friends and old friends that have moved on from you. Not dwelling in the past as you do, not worrying about friends who have passed out of the circle... Out of sight out of mind.” It whispers.

At the sound of the rasp in its voice my breath catches, and the familiar pain returns. The realization that I do live in the past, that I sit and try to recreate scenarios that have long since faded into dust in the minds of everyone else. I cower in corners, away from the pull of new friends, from the pull of new memories, and I cry tears for the old. For the old have moved on. There are no tears shed for me, no one sits in the world of the loved and tries to recreate me with those who were once my world, my ties to the earth.

I push back the slicing voice and finish my email. Letting the little white arrow flutter over the ‘send’ button as I wipe my damp cheeks. Then I click, and it’s gone. Sent with the power of technology to he whom I want to have back. I want him back near me, where I can see him everyday, have him to hug when I cry, have him to talk to when I’m angry, to laugh with when I’m happy, to spin in dizzying circles with for no other reason then to see the sky blur.

For a few days then weeks I check daily, then every second day, hoping this time he has found the time I always tell him not to worry about having, and has written me back. But eventually I go back to the old routine, feigning nonchalance, uncaring and secretly ripping inside, trying to ignore the shadow that’s returned and is whispering, “He doesn’t care…. At all…”

But hey! Life doesn’t always happen like you want does it? People move on and you get separated. You make promises to stay in touch. Promises that you dive into with all the vigor of youth then fade out of with all the laziness of the teenage years. You grow up, you move on, and look fondly at the years when you were in the arms of the innocent patron saint of happiness. Except me. I am stuck in the world of the past, sitting in my corner watching the shadows of my memories drift past, fading with every rerun.

Watching the colors fade, the words get drawn out, the joy and tenderness of the gilded memories fading as I fade myself. To be engulfed by the now dreary, over-lived reminiscences, sitting in my everlasting corner, crying tears that will never be dried.