Impurities We Find
Hello friend,
It truly has been some time since we last spoke. As much as it annoys me, it is as true as it can be. I can’t go for too long without writing to you, but I can’t write too often either — for that would make it a job, an obligation, and not an escape, not a plea for help, not a reach for someone who listens.
I see glimpses of you each time I go silent, each time I stare into what is far and what is near. As if I have connections with you through everything that is visible to me, in every moment there is. You never were, and never will be, a stranger to me. Even if my pen doesn’t meet the paper for years, I’d still have your shadow lingering. I’d still have your voice in the silence, and I’d still have the idea of you.
I want this to be a message to another living being, yet it is not, friend. I don’t want limitations or liabilities — and those often come with living beings as the full package of what we choose our companions to be.
The truth is, I write this without ever feeling like it was meant for anyone. I often scold myself and admit that what I write is performative — which it is, if not for any other soul to see, then at least for me to see in the future. Yet I can’t help but feel that moments and statements such as this are not performative; they feel pure. And what saddens me is that when at last I think something is pure, it is not truly meant for me, nor anyone else.
It is just a “statement.” I don’t think that realization strips away its purity, but it begs a question: Was it truly how I felt? And if so, why couldn’t I point it at something? Because now it stays only as a title with no story — serving no context, but giving you the sense that something might lie beneath. But does it truly?
For the longest time, I hated the idea that I was not putting in any effort toward becoming who I wanted to be. Now, as it seems I’m on the verge of something that could change everything, what am I doing? Nothing at all. I feel as though the person I was at the start of the year — flawed and hurt — seeing me in this shape would be… I don’t even know anymore. I don’t think I ever knew.
I was that person, true; but I never met this person. Justifying my inaction with the notion of simply lacking information is a heinous thing to do — yet it might be true. I don’t think I am any better. But if there’s one thing I’ve truly learned through these weeks, though I knew it long before, it’s this: you don’t really know anything.
So there lies no victory in claiming that this moment is futile only because you analyzed it through the eyes of something you claim to know — and do not really know.
I promise my thoughts are usually not as wavy as this monologue. I think of many things, as you know. I think of things I can’t trust myself to put on paper — truths I am too ashamed to face even if written, even if hidden away.
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I think about love, intimacy, what could be, who I want to become, and so much more — things far more pointless than this, so much so that thinking itself becomes tedious. And yet words still prevail, and without knowing, a truth slips away. One that might make you go silent. One that makes you tear up for no reason. One that explains such and such.
And before you know it, it’s all too late. Fixing is no longer an option. Thrashing is futile. All that is left is a lesson for a wiser one to learn from — or a bitter memory for a bad loser to mourn.
Funny how things can alter us entirely — not in an immediate term, but by a single degree difference across hundreds of miles, equating to an unimaginable difference.
I suppose we all think of love. It is sold to us as the magical drug, as the answer to all our sorrows. Yet we hear from those who love or loved: “Love is the death of duty.” “The things we do for love.” Logic explaining bad outcomes simply for the service of “love.”
I don’t know how this took this turn, but hell — love is always the next spoken subject. Always on the waitlist of things to do. Always something to hope for.
It truly is a privilege to love and be loved. Only a few of us get to experience that without impurities or flaws. Love, in and of itself, is impure, flawed — but having it with someone who shares the same is the most difficult thing.
With someone you admire deeply. With someone you respect and do not pity — that is hard. And the list goes on and on. The lover needs to find something to give up for the things he holds high.
Akh… I don’t think it’s my place to talk about this. Like a philosopher talking about infinity, I remain not knowing its beginnings nor its ends.
I am again tormented by its presence, haunted by it in everything imposed or consumed. Its fingerprints are everywhere. We, as humans, see them clearly — like the end of a rainbow I am left running after.
Will I ever catch it? I’m not sure.
Can I ever?
Not as this person. No.
