We had back then an easy pace. Together we could while away hours, days, just talking talking talking until other obligations called, until my father picked up the other phone and said I was on too late, it was time to go to bed. I could long for that, for our hours of whispered words and laughter, the exhilaration of it all being so fresh. That's why.
When I left, you came with me in a way that transcended my loneliness and fear, you dulled the edges of my transition. You made it that much easier for me to step up to each day as it came. For me your help was a way to keep on being, because back then I didn't know the strength in me like I do now. I'm sorry I would not let myself be everything for or to you then that I should have, that my commitment was a day late and dollar short, but you know it wasn't through lack of wanting--it was the misguided morals of youth, the everlasting failure to know something until it is gone, the torn heart that of all people you should understand. That's why.
When you left I let myself think in ways I am not proud of, and spent years wanting to be something I despise. For a while it was time and situation and other people that helped us grow apart, but there were cracks in the glass wall between us, and through some of those enough of the old sense of ease and life slipped through to keep something there, to feed a small, ravenous, despairing hope. Feeding that hope kept me from feeding any other, let me put up with any other thing because it didn't really matter. That's why.
"One only understands the things that one tames."
I don't know when it happened, but at some point I decided that I couldn't live like that anymore. That's why I can't always answer when you call, why I try and stay light and fluffy with the things I will say. Because at this point I don't even know what you really want anymore, and I can't--I can't find out, can't know you, because if I don't know you I can't love you. So I have to let the phone go unanswered. I have to be light and casual and keep you at a distance. I couldn't keep up with letting the world float on around me, with not participating, trying to stay frozen for an unknown someday. I couldn't keep feeling that lonely.
Because you chose, and it was not me. Because I have stopped waiting. I had to stop waiting. It's been what, eight years? How long after that decision could I keep holding on? Yet I still can't banish the guilt. A small part of me, I think, will always want to know. I always struggle with not picking up the phone. But what can I say? The current tenor of our conversations, sparse as they are, frustrates me--but where can it go? How do you span the gulf caused by bridges burned?
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you... "
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields."
[...]
"Goodbye," he said. "Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."
Don't steal it, it's not cool, and then I'll have to send angry hordes of zombie Pikachu's after you,
your family, and friends.. and that doesn't sound like much fun for anybody, now does it?
Heh. Okay, so it might be fun for me. But yeah, don't be a d-bag.