Would Have Been 20
I almost ended up doing the same thing I did last year, using another one of those old book reviews in order to create a “slot” for this post, but Webb‘s first images provided too good of an opportunity for a post that, while admittedly being embarrassingly brief and shallow, nevertheless created this “slot” for another personal one without the need to resort to one more of the remaining handful of old reviews that I’m yet to also add here. Not that a July 12 post wouldn’t be a very good reason to use up one of those, and even more so when it’s one that marks such a milestone, and both of these posts being added on the same day still means that I need one more by the end of the week, but I’m still trying to avoid using those old reviews for as long as I can. And the next post should be a quick review anyway, since I really should finish The Tower of Fools by the end of the week.
But, as I already said, today marks a milestone, 20 years since I first met Andra, since that first kiss and since moving so smoothly from being just friends to more, and mixing that with any other matters is terribly inappropriate. So what I’ll add here is that, yes, I did send an e-mail today, but obviously just because I know that it won’t get anywhere, because sending something like that, and on such a day, would be pretty bad, to put it mildly, if it might actually reach her… Even if that’s the opposite of what I was thinking last Monday, when I also sent an e-mail, after Micky died, to ask how long and how well did Bubu live after I wasn’t there anymore. But that’s something that I probably asked before, in messages that most likely also didn’t get anywhere, so I had in fact intended to make use of what I thought was the next to last contact method that I was actually likely to be able to use… Only to find that, since I had made use of it twice in the past, instead of blocking me there as well, she made it so those she’s not friends with won’t be able to send her messages there anymore. With well over a year since that second and last attempt to use that contact method, I don’t know exactly when it happened, but wonder if, instead of an act of “mercy”, to still allow me to see the profile, even if it seems that she doesn’t actively use that site anymore, that’s because a block would have indicated that she had seen my message back then.
Either way, this is obviously one of the two times per year when I tend to try to look things up, though this time around that proved futile. So my worst fear obviously remains the same, and not finding anything new just allows me to keep hoping that it didn’t and won’t materialize, without confirming in any way that it didn’t. And it’s the same when it comes to her at least being all right, hoping but being unable to know. And yes, something like this most likely looks bad in the eyes of anyone who might be reading. But nobody does, and even if anyone would, I don’t care. My feelings remain the same, and if a couple of searches and maybe also a couple of messages that don’t get anywhere per year are all I can still do, I guess that’s what I’ll do…
Otherwise, I’ll just yet again repeat what I also wrote two years ago: Our time together included the only moments when I thought that this life might just be worth living after all, that the future might just be something that I could even look forward to instead of this bleak, hopeless, terrifying source of constant anxiety, depression and even actual horror, at least on a personal level, since otherwise the reasons for hope are very few and getting fewer by the moment. So the fact that those good moments did exist is the only fuel I have for this whisper of a shred of hope that maybe I’ll have that again someday, at which point all of this would have been worth it. Of course I’m aware that it’s an entirely false hope, only created and maintained even at this purely theoretical level by my mind because, seeing as I was and still am too much of a coward, I’m still around and must hang on to something, the idea of the end coming, by whatever means, without something that’d make all the suffering as well as the use of resources be worth it happening first being a too disappointing prospect, to put it mildly, and getting ever more so as time passes. But, again, it’s all that’s left to cling on to, and has been for all this time… Which, in spite of all the suffering caused by her leaving, is still infinitely more than I had before my relationship with her.
