Waffles and guns

I wish you would approach me with less kindness. Not for lack of gratitude or appreciation, not because I find it an unflattering characteristic, and certainly not for any question of value: But because, though it is far from charity, it dictates how we relate to one another and how, at the end of the day, I think of you (though this is generally with a smile).

An attempt to explain this would start with the basic dualism: Heart, it suffers a ridiculous inclination towards blindness. Some experience, however, has taught Brain to always carry a flashlight.

Would I prefer a touch of cruelty? No - but I would have known how to navigate around it: Kindness, like yours, is a fog, clouding my vision and blurring the edges, and while it doesn’t hurt me, a flashlight won’t help me through it.

I will respond to your kindness with smiles as long as it is granted to me this way; but I would feel better armed with a map.

1
(Hello) There’s someone I’d like you to meet. X does your job and does it better than you. X is well liked and we like X more than you. You may have expected us to be able to read minds, but allow us to demonstrate we obviously can’t: Mr X is on the cover of the metaphoric Time Magazine, love, tell us - do you mind?

2
A false memory is a memory of an event that did not happen or is a distortion of an event that did occur as determined by externally corroborated facts.

“Therapists who adopt a suggestive approach when the patient tries to recall memories, are at risk of creating false memories whose content is related to the suggestion used. This is particularly true of situations in which the therapist is trying to account for a patient’s symptoms in terms, for instance, of a possible trauma in their past.”

3
I’ve seen it before, he says. Yes, I’ve seen it before too. Frown, scepticism in the corner of his mouth. I made decisions last time, I don’t say. My new year’s resolution? It’s Don’t do stupid shit. I don’t say this either. Don’t fucking underestimate my intelligence, I don’t say. Just be cool with him for a while, he says.

I promise I’m nowhere near uncool, I say. You’re right, I don’t say. I was blind until you brought it up and now I don’t know who to be angry with, I don’t say. Are you overestimating me, I don’t ask.

I used to dream, I don’t say. I woke at 3:04 am as faces blended with each other and I wanted to scream. I don’t want to say much at all. Don’t do stupid shit.

1
Of course I don’t mind. Of course it’s fine. Of course, I’m not going to have you digging through your most polite ways to say I’m second best.

2
But I don’t know if this did not happen. I don’t know if this is a distortion. I know shitty and I know sleepless. I know no suggestive therapist. I know any number of suggestive news stories, everyday entertainment, noble causes. The suggestion is written in concrete if you decide to look at it that way. I don’t know if this is a distortion. Fuck you.

3
It all comes down to distance and dreams. I’ll leave it at that, hun, but I need a few promises: Do not tie my name to the virtues you need the most. Do not, in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence, view me as the saviour of any kind of heart. Don’t expect me to have a heart at your disposal. Don’t be drawn to me for my principles and then expect to be the exception. I don’t make exceptions. And know this: I know about blindness. It’s all distance and dreams.

I would have wanted to ask what it is you dream of, but I was, selfishly, distracted by my own dreams. The time it takes to circle the knots in my head: it’s too long to reasonably pick up a conversation where it trailed off. I could tell you that I think these things (that your words aren’t simply disappearing in the gap), I could, in my blunt manner, tell you all the things I think. This is one of them: I have become too scared to approach those individuals I would most want to know. Shyness is not the reason - rather the opposite: If I trusted your (anyone’s) integrity, I wouldn’t hesitate.

Though, that is not the first thought I would choose to share. It would sound more like good night.

Vast silence is not the gift I would offer you if I could choose it away, but here it is; a full dictionary of the words I can’t find, and it is yours.

“He says I should try to get to know her. I think it’s silly.”
“I dunno”, I say, turning my head from an endless pile of paragraphs. “I don’t think you should ever get to know anyone, it only makes them more annoying.”

You grow older.

You learn that the puzzle pieces to make a person aren’t as many as you thought back when you first opened the box. You come to recognise traits in the new people you meet; each one tearing another bit out of the posters of past heroes in your heart. You name a tone of voice after the first to use it; you refer to the particular twist of a smile by the name of he who first showed it to you. Scents become places; the sounds translate to years. You cry - because you, too, are built out of pieces duplicated and found in other people’s boxes, because one of those pieces is imprinted with the childhood ideas of snowflakes.

You will have no part in this conversation. You feel justified in that this eager voice, this oddly improper laugh, is a puzzle you solved once already, under a different name, in a different street. You consider the ease with which you lapse back into melancholy; you are inspired to smile as you close your eyes and face the April sun.

You remember, with a bit of an effort, that the snow, once it’s fallen, turns out yellowed and filthy.

“I want to know what’s going through your mind”, someone states - and from across the ocean of distinct punctuation, you can’t hear my roaring laughter; you can’t see me shake my head.

“There’s not enough time”, the typing is fast, stressed, a point aching to get across, “So much to do and so few do it”, these are not at all new revelations, not sudden realizations, but sometimes the awareness of the facts stated manifests itself more forcefully. “Measured time, you know?” A limited number of heartbeats, only so many breaths. You’re all I have to remind me of who I have been, and following that, you remind me who I have wanted to be and what I no longer want. It’s about drinking, most of the time. Sometimes games, and sometimes shivering, but in my memory, always laughing until we choke. “You have to go out and do something. Now. Go!” I want to say how I dreamt we robbed a bank and even in the dream it was all about guilt. “Take advantage of whatever you can! - Claim insanity, claim instability, claim illness, grab the hands reached out and don’t let go!” And I tell you how you’re not really people, and you say you are and I know it, and I say yes, but it more time before I have to close a door between us, you know that, and I know what I am to you because it’s what I have always been. “I know you’re too proud.” I think of hitchhiking, of just stepping out of the house and see where the wind takes me. I think of moving across continents, of all the impulses, all the things I have ever dreamt of, I dream of foreign legions and far-away shelters, I dream of disconnection and new grounds. I admit to luxury habits, I admit to lingering fear of discomfort. “There’s no time to be afraid.” I hear eighties cartoon themesongs crashing in my head. “You see? You have to get out. No time.” I try to forget the guilt. I try to reshape the pride. I even try to stop counting the hideous heartbeat.

“Maybe he lied about his name to impress me - do I look like I’d rather fall for an Odin than an Ali?”
“I don’t know”, he said. “But I know the mountain is all you’ll ever fall for.”