The First Cleric of Iridloc

I lay in my bed around eight o'clock, watching the fading sky through the giant windows of sheer curtains tossed lightly by the summer breeze, a doorway leading out to the back landing. It's absolutely beautiful. It's one of the most serene and still moments I've experienced in years. It's odd because there is this juxtaposition between where I'm laying and where I'm watching; I'm surrounded by darkness down here. Lamplights are flickering on, and everything in this bedroom has given its color to dark silhouette. Up there, though, there is still this lingering of light. I can see the clouds painted in the blood of a dying sun. I can see shadows on formless golden smears against an indigo canvas. I watch this living scene through the darkened leaves and brush of the landscaping surrounding my building. It feels almost voyeuristic, watching such incredible beauty from below. I'm watching the mind of some celestial work from this messy, depressing room. Catching glimpses of something so large it's easy to miss. I feel....full. For a moment, at least. There's hope, in this moment. There's an image of a world I thought had been lost to my more peaceful childhood, winking at me as if to say, "I'm still here. It's you who left." The feeling is collapsed by a new one, though, when I think to myself, "I wish she were here to see this."

I wish you were lying here, in this bed, at this moment. I wish we could look through this absurdly placed window and witness this together. I wish that your voice could be the accompaniment to this one-act astral play I'm seeing. I wish, more than I've known possible, that you could just exist in this moment with me once more. There is a hole in this moment. If I'm being honest, there are holes in a lot of my moments. Those holes could often just be filled with anyone, though. Sometimes the holes are only formed by loneliness or boredom. This one, though. It's the exact absence of you. If I'd read those words, or heard them as poetry, I'd consider them some tired cliché. Before this moment, at least. I think I understand it now, though. For the first time in my life I know what it means to feel the absence of a specific person, and, if I'm honest, I hate myself for feeling that way about you.

Let's be honest with ourselves, yeah? You were awful to me, in so many ways. You did and said things to me that were hard to believe. There were moments where I genuinely thought that I must be on some kind of divine trial because the things you'd do were so outlandish and cruel that the easiest explanation my mind could conjure was that this must be some manufactured ruse to extract suffering on my part for the amusement of cruel gods. "There is no way a person would actually do this.", my mind would reason. "There has to be some explanation I'm not seeing." There wasn't, of course. You were just a deeply traumatized young woman who handled herself with the grace of a drunken toddler, and I happened to be beside you through some of your most damaging stumbles.

The problem is that when you'd hurt me (and you did hurt me, often) I would have to dig deep to forgive you. I would dredge the river looking for the spring of love that might smooth this over regularly, unknowingly excavating the bottom, making it deeper each time. I would deepen the stream somehow, and always end up loving you a little more with each offering of forgiveness. I loved- well, love- you because I felt that you needed it. I saw this wounded beast gnashing at everyone who came near her and thought, "She just needs to heal, and needs to be given the care necessary to make that happen." I saw myself as a shield, I suppose. I wanted to protect you from all the things that left all these scars on you so that you could heal back into the majesty I saw in you. I wanted to offer you a safe place to grow strong. So no matter how many nips and bites you left me with, I saw it all as part of the healing process, as some way of gaining your trust. "You can bite me, my friend, but I'm not going to abandon you." I wanted to be important to you, I guess. Instead you just vanished.

I admit, there's a fine line between wanting to help someone and trying to become their savior, and there were moments where I became more focused on your healing than your pain. I'll maintain that those moments came more from inexperience and a genuine place of love, though, than any kind of malice. I wanted to give a world of beauty and safety back to you, so that we could share these moments together. Moments where the sky covers us in awe from our bedroom window.

Of course I tried to forget you immediately. Of course I've been angry. You lied, cheated, hurt, and used me, and then just left me here. I think that's what makes me so angry with myself. In spite of all the things you did to me, and the absolute lack of consequences you've endured for such harmful behavior, I still miss you. My heart, for some reason, still leaves a place for you at the dinner table of my life. When I experience something awe inspiring and breath-taking, I still reach for you. When days are bad, and there are a lot of bad days, I still want to hear your voice. I miss the way you'd speak to the cats. I'd imagine that sweet, soft, raspy voice talking to our children one day like that. I miss seeing you in old faded clothes on the free mornings here at the college as we'd just....exist for a few hours. I miss trying to find ways to impress or excite you when you were feeling down. I miss trying to make you laugh when we were going to sleep just to get a few more moments of time with you into the day. I hate myself for loving you, the person who has hurt me more than anyone has ever been capable of, so much that I still look past the harm you did into the soul I loved. I should hate you, and yet it's me I end up despising for....well...not hating you.

I know, at some point, if I can hold out long enough, this might fade. Someone new may come along and build some new passion in me that dwarfs what I've felt for you. I understand that in an intellectual sense, at least, but my mind struggles to fathom something as deep seated as this is just dissolving. I also fear that the only reason I loved- love- you this deeply is exactly because of the harm you caused. I tried dating after you left, and at some point this bright-haired human woman said to me during a fight, "Is that what it takes to get what I need from you? To be abusive to you?". She was comparing herself to you because she knew how hard I tried for you. It was a really unfair thing of her to say, and I left not long after that (I'm learning boundaries, at least...), but it's a question I don't know the answer to. Is the reason I can't compare how I feel about you to anyone else because the harm you caused was so far and above the harm anyone else has? If that's true, what hope do I have of ever being happy? I wasn't happy when you'd lie to me. I was miserable feeling ignored, abandoned, or neglected, but what if that really was what inspired such a strong connection to you? And if it was, what does that mean for my recovery? You disappeared, and if abandonment is what forges attachment in my heart, am I subject to only grow ever more bound to you through your absence?

I don't know. I think ultimately I wanted those things to stop. So maybe that's not why I felt- feel- so strongly for you. I think the idea of a soulmate is unreasonable, of course, but I felt different about you from day one, and I don't know how I'm to find that again. There are certain realities I have to keep in mind. If you were to come back today, I couldn't do it again. I know that. Not knowing how to find the "right" person, though, makes this entire point in my life terrifying. I don't know how to move forward, but I'm smart enough to at least refuse to move back. I can't even enjoy moments like this, though, because you're both omnipresent and conspicuously absent.

That makes me so scared for the coming months, too. Before long it will be Fall. Our favorite time of year. What good will come from decorating the rooms for harvest, making winter plans, or going to celebrate solstice with they Satyrs without you? I can't do it. I'm not going to hang reminders of your absence around my home to torture myself with, but what happens when I leave the house? What happens when I can't escape the festive music at the markets? You'll haunt me everywhere, and I know it's coming, and I'm so fucking scared to wake up every day because I know I'm getting closer and closer to having to endure those moments. I threw away our mementos and decorations after you left last year. I hoped I could cleanse those days of you. I couldn't though. Not yet. I don't know that I want to, honestly. I know how hard it will be, and how long it will take, and it's so overwhelming and unsatisfying. I hate that I can't live a life without your shadow cast over me. I hate that I'm not strong or smart enough to figure out a way to exorcise your spirit from my mind. Just like when we were together though, it's me I'm angry at. Never you. I'm the one who should shoulder the burden of cleaning up this mess, not just angrily throw my hands up and walk away from it all. That was your role, I guess. It's been half a year, and it feels like it's only getting harder.

There's an alternate plane out there, you know. Some parallel version of this world where you didn't do the things you did. You loved me. You trusted me, and you cared for me. That big anniversary day I had planned for you went off without a hitch, and you had an amazing time. I'd cry and you'd relent and back down and listen to me. We married, had kids, and learned to be better people for each other and our children. We travelled, and when we'd see beautiful amazing things in Parea and beyond we'd look at each other for just a moment in quiet understanding at the magnitude of privilege that comes with sharing a life like this with someone who you love so deeply. When you'd have hard days I'd find new ways to comfort you. A realm where you were here for me when the cats each passed away. A universe where we built traditions and a life better than the ones we were expected to lead. If I understand the planes correctly, there are actually a lot of parallel planes where those things happened. Things I couldn't even imagine. Universes where one of us dies in the others arms. Universes where we never even meet. An infinite number of them, it seems. So I guess I shouldn't be too sad. Somewhere, elsewhere, you saw that sunset with me. You laid with me in this bed, windows framing this quiet little scene for us. Maybe the cats laid with us in a silent house in the fields outside Sopher and maybe we filled this room with quiet, simple love, rather than the empty darkness filling the one I'm in. Some infinite versions of me got to share this with you. Some infinite versions of me are sitting here writing this, as well, so I suppose I shouldn't feel so alone. The mind struggles to meaningfully digest such vast, abstract notions, though, which still leaves me with this feeling, this sadness and longing. I know I'm in the universe where I don't get to spend my life with you, and that's still disappointing. For all I know something infinitely better is in store for me, sure. There is that hope. I do know, though, that this is the universe where you hurt and used me, and left me behind, and right now that's a universe I loathe to be in.

It's not like you'll ever see this, of course. You wouldn't read my stories and letters even when I'd beg you to. Why would you now? But I guess this is the universe where I had to write out my thoughts in a way that risked exposure. This is the universe where I had to see that sunset without you and have it tainted by your omission. This is the universe where I have to find a way to come to terms with the fact that this is this universe, independent of what I do, think, or feel. Unless I can find a way into one of the others, I'm stuck here.