It had been this way, always and ever. Everything I touched seemed to break and fall from me, a modern Midas curse haunting me, cajoling with each further conceited desire that signified all I was about to lose. I had thought I was reaching out to her, but in reality I was pushing her away. In my mind her image was like crystal, the poor surrogate proof of the errant want that compelled me, heedless and unknowing, towards that simple act which would sever my dream. It was a beautiful dream too, as they always seem to be, again and again. I would never lose that power, no matter what happened, or didn’t. Amidst the shattered ruins of every failed predecessor one arose anew, till I began to wonder if I weren’t a dreamer but a collector of broken glass. They still possessed the power to reflect. They still held value and use. How many vivid creations I seemed able to make of my past. Symbols pieced together, forced to cohere into something bigger than I could ever have imagined in their original forms, yet very possibly less all the same.
So that is how I lost her friendship. I had wanted more, as every human being whose beaten paths we but follow. Never had I risked so much for so little when I made my attempt. I ventured everything on that little as if it were the panacea to all my wounds. Even now, I think the same, though perhaps more bitterly. Not towards her. She was blameless in the way which all people are. She could no more choose how she felt than I could deny what encroached ever more forcefully upon my heart with every moment or memory of moments past. That is to say, I had chosen to be very honest with myself. Pain or fear might suppress its sharing with others, but I spared my own peace of mind no willful deceit. I never dared. It may be that I was too good a liar already.
Perhaps if I had told her all this, if I had been as honest with her, she might have embraced me rather than retreat so far that I pictured her beyond even the dimmest star. I had been found wanting, maybe even incapable of being wanted by her. This sting struck me deepest of all. I felt it instantly when my letter came back to me, unopened. It bit me then and every moment since, until it developed into a dull ache, until it became a part of me, a scar imperfectly healed that keenly felt the weather of season passing into season. The injury was not my first. I remember now the immensity of those days when I thought the pain would kill me. In the end I had come out stronger, less vulnerable, but also less capable of love. No, less capable of being loved. Each loss echoed back to the original, forming a string of disappointments whose cause I could not locate until I began to wonder if it lay in the dark core of my soul, where conscious minds cannot, dare not, tread.
Originally Posted by Bionicgoat
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