03-27

People can haunt. It isn't being dead that's required so much as being absent.

Growing up means missing others. You cannot separate the two; they come in tandem. You must simply learn how to miss properly, and how to live with the missing itself.

To you,

Maybe it was like what George Orwell said, "Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood." Maybe that was it. All I know is it felt like such a privilege to be there. To be seen and heard and understood by you.

Do you remember that conversation we had, about disappearing? The way people have a tendency do that? My mistake here was thinking you were somehow an exception.

I would walk around my college campus, expecting to look up and see you even though we didn't go to the same school. I'd get cocoa and take it up to the top floor in the library. It had the best view of the sunset, and I always wanted to show you.

I hated you.

"Another number on the birthday cake; you should act your age." I remember listening to that on a drive to who knows where, and you laughed and said, so true. It was. It was so true.

You used to share experiences with me. You would look for my eye contact and facial expressions. You'd look for my reaction. You held it in some sort of regard. But now you just stared straight ahead, alone with your thoughts I was no longer privy to. It was a lonely feeling, I'll give you that.

We laughed at ridiculous things. That's what I remember most - the laughter constantly falling out of our faces. That was probably another mistake of mine, thinking of that laughter as ours. Because that laughter was yours; I was simply a happy consumer of your best-selling product. That laughter belonged to you. It came with you the same as it left with you. I see that now.

Sometimes I think, why do I remember this so well? Is any of it something you've even thought about since?

Am I?