Dating : Eden

I think I was running. For the longest time I was running away from all the pain and the guilt that I had caused and all the weight it was pressing down on me — I wanted to be lighter than air, ever-present, but presence negligible. More than lightness I wanted to be free, free of the darkness, free from the things I had convinced I could never have done. Lastly, I wanted anesthetic, numbness from the pain I had caused and still am causing. To escape unscathed from nearly two years of pain, anger, and frustration. I couldn’t believe that I had done what I had kept doing, and so I convinced myself that I didn’t and wasn’t — that none of it was truly me and to deflect all my mistakes on the world. In this endeavor to be weightless, I flew higher and higher and paradoxically lower and lower with an eternal sense of doom weighing in upon me — nicotine was the answer and when nicotine wasn’t enough there was alcohol. I was weightless, alone, unfettered, as well as a neverending list of paradoxes.

I both knew and didn’t know I was hurting you. Knowing in that I could see your tears, your pain, your anger, and the apathy that shone on your face even as I sensed my flight waning; unknowing in that I couldn’t understand what any of it meant. Shallowly, I thought of immediate causes, of hormones, stress, anxiety, or of tiny little mistakes littered along the way before a fight in the form of unanswered messages, misworded or misheard and unheard sentences. In my flight, I forgot about empathy — perhaps more than that, I forgot common humanity. High in the clouds, I could admire the lights guiding a night sky without care that they were wildfires destroying the world we had built for each other. The world we had built around tucked-away rooms in the outskirts of the city, in forests, in classrooms, in the lonely corners where we could love and love freely away from the leering gaze of the world.

Then I flew. I flew for fear, then frustration, then anger, then in flight, things began to feel normal, blissfully ignoring the trail of destruction I left behind me. The desolation, the wasteland, the anger, it was behind me — but I longed for the ground as much as the sky in ways I couldn’t quite understand. It was a matter of voices and consciences at the end of the flight. I had stalled in the air and gazed deeper into the wildfire and saw you in the middle of it. Past all the thorny bushes, the arid, dry air about you, past the raging fires of your anger and hurt there was you: curled up in the smallest ball you could manage, desolate, lonely, but surviving. At that moment the flight was over and the wind went out from under me and in agony, I felt the desolation and loneliness I had been causing for two years — I felt my chest crushed, I could not imagine this pain for two more hours, let alone two years.

I looked about me, mouth and throat dry, the fires were all gone but all that was left was wasteland and desert. I sought out for you from where I fell, feeling lonelier in the world than I had ever been in my whole life. Wandering in circles I heard a faint voice — familiar and unfamiliar all at once. My fear both grew and waned and anger was replaced with guilt. I felt as though the world would swallow me there and then, hell within my grasp and my only destiny. Again I heard a voice call out to me and in the distance, I saw your growing figure — a presence I did not feel was deserved. For all my guilt I knew that I deserved hell, yet there you were, hands stretched out, holding a piece of something you did not let go for two years of wandering a scorched, inhospitable landscape — some piece of the love we shared before the flight preserved by your love, your patience, your hope, your tireless defense against the hurt and anger and pain that I was causing in my wake.

It was a small hope, a small piece of what once was, but enough to start with. It wasn’t starting over, no, it was a stream of continuity — like a book started but never finished, simply waiting to be picked up once again. You took my hand in yours, assured me that I would not be alone in the wasteland, that you knew what it was to suffer alone and you don’t want me to suffer through any of what you had alone. It was a long way from Eden, but we were walking back together.

As we walk hand in hand, I grow more painfully aware of your scars, scars inflicted over two years of my willful ignorance and my cruelties; your apprehension of our journey in return is warranted and guilt grows in me when I’m aware of it. Yet you squeeze my hand and assure me that things will be all right, I ask you to keep me grounded and you oblige.

You and I, we create a world out of our scattered pieces, a universe still in flux but on its way to stability. Faith in you and faith in me, we’ll make it back all right. The flight was over and with it the lightness — the journey shows the consequences, the pains and hurts I have caused over the years but we’ll make our way back. The little piece you saved had saved me from my hard charge into oblivion, like awakening once again. As with Lazarus from the cave, I return to your arms in eternal hope that you will take me past my failings and shortcomings and find with us home once again.

It’s a long walk to Eden, but we’re walking together, my love, my dear, my darling.