To put the matter delicately, it is a sobering rite of passage.
To discover that one usually looks their best
when their friends compliment them the least,
And it is usually during their biggest achievements
When their friends clap the quietest,
If at all.
It is usually when one exclaims, ‘I am well! I truly am well’
When friends smile back with gritted teeth and mechanical nods
And when one declares, ‘I am in love! I truly am in love!’
When friends must disguise the roll of their eyes with rapid blinks of
Plastic excitement.
Eyes that once used to light up seeing you
have now turned green and,
Tongues that spoke your highest praise
have suddenly turned sour.
It is not a merciful snap of the neck,
But rather death by a thousand gentle, doting thuds to the head.
That is what it feels like.
The discomfort sits along the bridge of your nose and bones of your cheeks, where one usually places blush,
And scoops your chest hollow, as if you are passionfruit. Thick, seeded, out-of-season passionfruit.
That is what it feels like.
The death of a friendship is not theatrical and grand, like some deaths,
It is a slow, miserable decay, like most deaths.
Its stench is hideous, but you do not notice until it is
Beyond repair and reversal. It is subtle,
Like when on winter mornings, one begins to shower
At an agreeable, respetable, lukewarm heat.
And then, slowly and steadily, one adjusts the heat higher and,
Higher and,
Higher until,
Without realising, one is boiling their skin and brewing their guts.
Only to re-enter into the angered, frosty air, as is the tradition of winter mornings,
To realise that they scalded and scorched,
Without skin and without sense
But always realised too late.
It is a tumultuous state, to be alone.
To be completely, fully and purely alone.
On one lonely, cold, unheld hand, it tears ones spirit and shatters ones heart.
Gravity becomes alien so the ground is no longer ground,
But a peculiar, useless lump of matter.
Days become quieter and nights colder.
On the other lightened, burdenless, freed hand,
It marks transition. Beginnings’ predecessor is always the End.
It does away with the moth-ball ridden cardigans of the winter and allows hangers for sundresses of the spring.
Alone gifts breathing space and,
grants perspective and
gives opportunity for one to fall in love with themselves again.
And to stay in love, this time around.
But as you drift away on your flimsy, barely-afloat lifeboat,
And watch the ship you so lovingly and tenderly crafted,
Spent so many happy hours of your life upon,
The memories carved into the wooden wheel or doodled upon the sails,
sink,
Over a frustratingly bittersweet sunset-kissed horizon.
You’ll cry
and hurt
and curse,
The very Universe itself.
But, the same Universe will gently guide you to a new island perhaps,
or bump you towards a new boat,
Wherein new adventures, new love and new learning eagerly waits to embrace you.
And you may just wish you jumped off the flaming, flailing mess a little earlier.
The drift, no matter how destructive, dangerous and difficult,
Is always divine.
I promise.
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