Remember me as a Time of Day

   Warning: I'm a little bit out of my mind right now. I have too many thoughts to fall asleep, so I'll spill them here.

   I heard from Kid A tonight, for the first time in a long time. He's doing well and is surprisingly one of the few people supportive of my plans for relocation. "It's where you belong," he tells me. "Portland. Not here." 
   I smile a little, to myself, thinking how right his statement is, but how wrong his reasons are. He thinks I'm going to go live among the hipsters and assimilate. He has no idea who I am. I've never assimilated in my life and I have no intention to start- least of all to fit in with a bunch of pretentious morons who think they're living above conformity by conforming to the standards of their selective little subculture instead of the "mainstream," whatever the hell that means. 
   The conversation goes smoothly, although I spend a good portion of it nauseated. I spent a good number of years pretty nauseated actually, mostly due to nerves and self-doubt. With every re-emergence in my life he brings back with him a crippling feeling of inadequacy. The instant he speaks, I literally feel paralyzed. It's so silly and tragic. (Contradictions are my thing here, people! We know this!)
    He and I have a pretty well-developed rapport, and we ease back into it without much difficulty. It stuns me how subversively manipulative he is, but more so how it still affects me. Not to any measurable degree, especially compared to how it once did, but I do still feel a nagging need to measure up to his expectations. He keeps them unrealistically high. As soon as I meet them, he skyrockets them all over again. For someone who found Catch-22 (my favorite book) "annoying," he certainly pays tribute to Colonel Cathcart, eh? 
   He twists my words. It makes me uncomfortable because words have always been so mine. The ones I say, anyway. I maintain such meticulous diction that it throws me off when he seemingly transforms my sentences right before my eyes.
   "I haven't dedicated myself to a concept in years," I inform him, explaining my distaste for self-definition through music or books, knowing he'll compartmentalize me anyway.
   "Do you think that's a good thing," he asks, "not to devote yourself to anything?" 
   He flusters me. Fortunately, I have better balance now. He kept such strict control of me easily for two reasons: I had inordinately low self-esteem, and I was hopelessly in love with him. Now that he has lost both of these, he focuses our interactions on gaining one or both of them back. It almost works in the beginning because time has made me ill-equipped to handle his underhandedly condescending remarks, but I distance myself from the immediacy of the situation and remember how little I am concerned with his approval. Then I feel my spine grow back. 
   "Are you still writing?" he asks.
   "Yes," I reply. "I'm a shittier person when I don't write, so I keep doing it." 
   I briefly consider linking him here but, knowing he would instantly identify himself, I decide against it.
    "Good," he answers. "You were always one of my favorite writers."
   When he asks me what I write about, I draw a blank.
   "Myself, mostly. That's my primary interest." 
   He admits that he has started writing, but hasn't developed his own voice yet. We discuss writing as a tool for self-discovery and he asks me if I've made any progress.
   "Discovering myself?" I ask.
   "Yes."
   "I'm certainly more familiar with myself than I was at sixteen, though I'm a lot less sure about it."
   "Do you think you were happier at sixteen, or now?" The question itself makes me laugh.
   "Now, without a doubt." I affirm. "I'm pretty sure no matter what happens in my life, I will always be happier than I was at sixteen." 
   "I'm not sure if it was the chemicals in the water or what, but those were miserable years," he says.
    "I think it was the age," I volunteer.
   "And the music and the books and the idols," he adds. He certainly has a point; Rage Against The Machine, George Orwell and Kurt Cobain aren't exactly pick-me-ups.
   He continues on to explain that the problems we suffered could have been "solved easily" by a "quick cognitive change." I shudder at the oversimplification, and disagree.
   "I think high school was mostly waiting for the haze to dissipate. And that mostly just required time. I think I did the best I could with the resources available to me at the time."
   I laugh and admit to having had "more angst than everyone else at our entire high school combined."
  "That's why I enjoyed our conversations so much," he says. "You were a breath of fresh air." He laughs and adds, "though more like a tornado." 
   Torn between smiling and wincing, I just agree. "It was a lot more hyperventilating than breathing, I think."
   He suddenly adopts a different tone. Becoming more somber, he admits "Looking back, I see myself as such an egocentric prick." 
   Finding his summation so astute, I burst out laughing. "We all had personas," I reassure him. "What else could we do? We weren't ready to be real people yet." 
   "I had a hell of a time with that persona," he says, absent of the hint of remorse he had shown seconds before. "So it all worked out." 
   I sigh quietly, disappointed with myself for having redeemed him. That's a habit I haven't shaken, I guess; forgiving his sins. I've managed to overcome the need to constantly apologize to him for them, but I haven't figured out how not to absolve him of them yet. 
   When we part ways, I am still reinforcing the distance I've been maintaining throughout. When he breaks through it, I'm floored.
   "I hope things work out well for you," he says, and I can actually feel his sincerity. This may be the first time I've ever felt certain he was sincere about anything. 
   "You too," I say.
   "And I would like to apologize for all the stupid shit I did in my youth."
   My heart falls to the floor. I've never expected or imagined he would make any admission. It's so surprising, yet so quintessentially him; bare and minimal, lacking real substance, yet pregnant with undertones, and heavy enough to break your back.
   "Like what?" I want to ask. "That time you brought all your friends over to my house and walked right past me without so much as a hello and ruined my best friend's birthday cake, then left it ouside on my sidewalk for me to clean up? Are you sorry for that? What about when you started dating someone else, but lied to me about it for eight months while you spent hours telling me how much you needed me, and loved me? Or how you pretended I didn't exist any time your friends were around? What about when you invited me to meet you out, and then sat with your girlfriend, pretending not to notice I was there? Or any of the countless times you invited me places and then whispered to your friends behind my back 'How did she even know we were going to be here? Why did she just show up?' Or the hours you spent convincing me to show you poetry I had written, only to later read it aloud to your friends, and your girlfriend? Or any of the innumerable nights you promised to show up, but never did? Are you sorry for that?" 


   "Thank you," I say instead. "I appreciate that. I made my share of mistakes though, and I'm sorry for those, too." (Mine were just fewer, and less malicious, I add, silently.)
   "Take care, Linnea," he says. I realize this is one of only four times I have ever heard him say my name. The first three, scattered throughout the years, hit me like lightning bolts. This one settles in, softly. It lacks the electrocution.

   I'm grateful for his apology, those sixteen words I didn't see coming. I understand why he kept it so brief. They were painful years. Listing his transgressions would be time-consuming, and heartbreaking.
   We conduct our daily lives with our sins suppressed, nearly forgotten. Carrying the weight of them would be unbearable, and reminding ourselves of them could feel like reliving them. And I don't want to relive his sins any more than I want to relive my own. They were unendurable. They belong in the past, silent and hidden.
   And, although other adjectives have been offered- cruel, evil, sadistic... I could go on- "stupid shit" pretty well encompasses it.
   I feel like I've been released from hostility and bitterness I've felt at the mere mention of his name for so long. I still feel them pouring out of me, leaving me lighter and calmer. It's lovely.

   And I wonder what will be left when the bad things are drained. I'm not sure if there's any love left there. I know there isn't much, if it's there. I'm just wondering if I'll ever taste any sweetness in my mouth, when I remember our good days. 
   I'm not sure, but I'm open to the possibility.

   I'm just relieved I can finally let go.