Shot in the heart
It’s ok to be sad, I told myself as I sunk into the plane seat. Around me families, couples, friends were organising themselves to prepare for 13 hours of being trapped in a metal cigar. I was in mourning, like an idiot, for something that never existed. Nothing had changed, except I had. A life of dull progress interspersed with intensely painful moments of self discovery had prepared me in part for this feeling. It was loss, pure unadulterated loss, for something I knew I could never have had.
I’d come 12000km to reconnect with an old friend. They were someone who meant far more to me than I would ever mean to them. It had been a good week I told myself, my inner monologue trying to keep my narrative positive. I wasn’t just one emotion I kept screaming in my head, I could feel dozens of emotions if I needed to. I can be happy and sad, jealous and glad, calm and raging. Such duality of feeling reveals a storm, distorting my core while I tried to hold onto the calm at my centre.
Nothing had changed, we were still good friends, chatting away over my phone as I boarded the plane. I reminded myself of logistics, that the fantasy that fought to control my heart was just unfeasible. 12000km destroys all such relationships, as it had already destroyed hers to the man she still loved. It wouldn’t be different for me, the same issues, the same result.
However that was a lie and I knew it, as soon as she talked about her new lover my part in her story was clear. I was background, a voice of compassion over the internet. I was the wise gay friend who picked her up so she was ready to meet the love of her life. I wasn’t throwing away at my shot at something better, this was the pinnacle. In a couple of years she would move on and find a partner, maybe get married, maybe find a city she wanted to stay for decades in. In the years to come I’d see her less and less, dropping further into the background. One day I’d be scenery dressing in an old photo.
I’d stopped sinking into the seat, reaching equilibrium with the plastic and metal that surrounded and contained me. The voices of the happy people around me quietened as the engines started to roar, the plane about to defy nature and soar across the sky. So I needed to defy my nature, get past my feelings rather than just burying them. I needed to move on, so that one day she would be a background character in my story as well.
It was all I had left, to take a shot with someone else. While a shot in the big black unknown future, it was a shot I was not going to throw away.
I’d come 12000km to reconnect with an old friend. They were someone who meant far more to me than I would ever mean to them. It had been a good week I told myself, my inner monologue trying to keep my narrative positive. I wasn’t just one emotion I kept screaming in my head, I could feel dozens of emotions if I needed to. I can be happy and sad, jealous and glad, calm and raging. Such duality of feeling reveals a storm, distorting my core while I tried to hold onto the calm at my centre.
Nothing had changed, we were still good friends, chatting away over my phone as I boarded the plane. I reminded myself of logistics, that the fantasy that fought to control my heart was just unfeasible. 12000km destroys all such relationships, as it had already destroyed hers to the man she still loved. It wouldn’t be different for me, the same issues, the same result.
However that was a lie and I knew it, as soon as she talked about her new lover my part in her story was clear. I was background, a voice of compassion over the internet. I was the wise gay friend who picked her up so she was ready to meet the love of her life. I wasn’t throwing away at my shot at something better, this was the pinnacle. In a couple of years she would move on and find a partner, maybe get married, maybe find a city she wanted to stay for decades in. In the years to come I’d see her less and less, dropping further into the background. One day I’d be scenery dressing in an old photo.
I’d stopped sinking into the seat, reaching equilibrium with the plastic and metal that surrounded and contained me. The voices of the happy people around me quietened as the engines started to roar, the plane about to defy nature and soar across the sky. So I needed to defy my nature, get past my feelings rather than just burying them. I needed to move on, so that one day she would be a background character in my story as well.
It was all I had left, to take a shot with someone else. While a shot in the big black unknown future, it was a shot I was not going to throw away.