There are so many things I wish I could say to you. But given the contexts of our situation, I think it's best that they fall on deaf ears.
I went swimming the other day. I screamed all of my insecurities and my frustrations at the bottom of the pool, hoping to drown that part of me that you no longer felt inclined to love.
Remember how I once told you my greatest fear was drowning. I reviled the idea of being suffocated and inundated by fluid seeping into my lungs and pores until homeostasis was finally achieved through gradual osmosis. The idea of gradually fading into the blandness of the surrounding element was deeply unsettling to me. So I learned to swim. I swam until I rose above the rest, deftly treading on that oscillating line that bordered each element. I was never out of your element. You quipped that it could be quite poetic - my final moments deferring to the motions of underwater currents. "Fuck poetry," I retorted with a smirk, "it's resignation." I always was crass at the right moments.
Anyway, I didn't drown. When I ran out of air, I choked and effortlessly rose to the surface. It was instinctive. Self-preservation, that is. In many ways, I was always a survivor. It doesn't come out of choice. You would have been proud of me. Or maybe you wouldn't. It didn't take much effort. You only wanted me to make an effort.
I remember watching you sleep. How peaceful you seemed in those moments when your mind was finally offered a moment's rest. I wanted to tell you how serene you looked when you were at peace. But, rest hardly besets your waken mind. "Idle minds are wasted resources," you claimed, "I'm a conservationist." I'm a conservationist as well. But I'm saving the best of my mind for the right moment. Like in that John Mayer song, I, too, like to think the best of me is still hiding up my sleeve.
Sheer beauty forces my impulsiveness sometimes. Alright, maybe all the time. You see, I've always been impulsive. It's like the first time I told you I loved you. You laughed, called me "silly", and said that I couldn't possibly be in love in so little time. I was being impulsive. Like the first time we kiss. Simple impulse. But it's what you fell in love with. And it's what you fell out of love with. Impulse is instinctual. My instincts have never been wrong. I guess you always knew that. I guess you couldn't stand that. I don't do it by choice.
"I want to say that you had given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be."
I suppose you wanted the same from me.
But between your delusions and my delusions of grandeur, one would be surprised that there was ever a moment of truthfulness between us. Yet, happiness was a reality then. I think you'd be hardpressed to find two people happier than we. Still, the reality in which we thought we resided was simply a fabrication concocted from the finest materials of both our minds.
We were happy once. Once. We would remain in bed for hours on end. We bared our souls, lying totally exposed, only covered by the pristine white sheet of discretion that hid the lesser parts of us that we preferred not to reveal. But what we once knew, once shouted aloud became a murmur. A murmur much like the susurrous stories of fallen trees told by the whispering wind through the forest. The whispers that lulled all who bore leaves to sway in agreement. But it was what we preferred not to reveal that refused to yield. Maybe we should have been more honest - maybe we would have been deeper rooted. But like the unyielding tree with shallow roots, we were destined to fall.
You once told me you didn't believe in fallen trees. If no one stands to bear witness, if no one sees or hears it fall, the tree never fell. It didn't happen. So why waste time lamenting or thinking about it? It is what it is. I asked if you thought it grew in sideways. Its livelihood choked by the shadows casted down by the scorn of the masses above, who berated the iconoclast ways of the horizontal tree. You said it didn't matter. In time, it won't matter.
Anyway, I suppose that's right. You were always right. In time, all murmurs dull to a silence. All trees cease to sway. Time passes. Weeping branches shed leaves that cover the vestiges of the horizontal tree. And all that eventually remains is the stoicism of the steadfast trees standing tall, while everything else just fades away...
