Episode XVII: A Sincere Adieu
I’ve been asked to say goodbye.
If only to set the record straight. Hang a sign that read that “I do not write here anymore”, or finally send the bartender home by raising my finger for the check. Have them dim the lights and maybe tip the doorman on my way out - a quiet yet subtle signature of my resignation.
Goodbyes are natural, or so we’d all like to think. And so we kiss the cheeks of our friends and our family, and wave to our acquaintances and pet our dogs. But maybe if I had left without a word, it would all be the same. Remembering all the goodbyes in my life, they’ve always either been polite or painful, courteous or cruel. Never pleasant. Never good.
And I do not admit this with the sour taste of cynicism. But with all honesty, I find it strange how any goodbye can ever be truly good.
When she said goodbye, she had said it in only so many words. With the clumsiness of her stutter, and the stutter of her clumsiness. And as she tried to put it gently, softly, in the way that one would mercifully edge a dagger into one’s chest, she could find no other way but to slide it straight into my heart. For after she had fallen out of love with me, it was the only way she could ever touch me again.
I was furious. For a time. For the brutality of her efficiency. The cruelty of her technique. But then I wonder whether she could have said it in any way, in any other way, that would soften the blow. When I walked away from the sidewalk that evening, her hands pressed painfully on her lap, my pride hanging from my sleeve; I realized too late that sometimes goodbyes are hardly a matter of raising your finger for the check. Or tipping the doorman.
Goodbyes are apologies if nothing else. A gracious exit from a tedious family gathering. A subtle excuse to leave a friend’s birthday. A hesitant farewell to a mid-afternoon mistress. Or a sincere adieu to a parting lover. And it is all masked by the eloquent lie that we shall all see each other again. But then, I never saw her again.
“I don’t know what to say,” she confessed, almost desperately, when I still cared to listen. And if I had any sense in me then I would have admitted to myself that she couldn’t say anything. Because even if she had, I doubt that I had any courage left in me to listen. For as much as I loved her I knew that my love was but an echo in an empty cave, cursed to reverberate off the walls, endlessly, until its very sound was thinned and finally silenced. I could not hear her; not anymore. And for months now, she dared not hear me.
“Must you have loved her in such a painful way?” a friend had asked me one evening.
And the truth, and though I did not tell her, was that I could not love her in any other way.
I’ve been asked to put my pen down, and to set this aside, for my own sake if no one else’s. And though these words have begun to play like a broken record into a lot of your ears, it seems that I cannot help myself from writing about anything else. I do not forgive her, I admit, but that is because there is nothing to forgive. Goodbyes are never truly good, it seems, but they are natural. As natural as the way that one may love, and yet, may so candidly fall out of it.
I can remember that at least, if nothing else. And because of that I cannot say goodbye. Not like this. Not yet.
edited from the 'otter side'
If only to set the record straight. Hang a sign that read that “I do not write here anymore”, or finally send the bartender home by raising my finger for the check. Have them dim the lights and maybe tip the doorman on my way out - a quiet yet subtle signature of my resignation.
Goodbyes are natural, or so we’d all like to think. And so we kiss the cheeks of our friends and our family, and wave to our acquaintances and pet our dogs. But maybe if I had left without a word, it would all be the same. Remembering all the goodbyes in my life, they’ve always either been polite or painful, courteous or cruel. Never pleasant. Never good.
And I do not admit this with the sour taste of cynicism. But with all honesty, I find it strange how any goodbye can ever be truly good.
When she said goodbye, she had said it in only so many words. With the clumsiness of her stutter, and the stutter of her clumsiness. And as she tried to put it gently, softly, in the way that one would mercifully edge a dagger into one’s chest, she could find no other way but to slide it straight into my heart. For after she had fallen out of love with me, it was the only way she could ever touch me again.
I was furious. For a time. For the brutality of her efficiency. The cruelty of her technique. But then I wonder whether she could have said it in any way, in any other way, that would soften the blow. When I walked away from the sidewalk that evening, her hands pressed painfully on her lap, my pride hanging from my sleeve; I realized too late that sometimes goodbyes are hardly a matter of raising your finger for the check. Or tipping the doorman.
Goodbyes are apologies if nothing else. A gracious exit from a tedious family gathering. A subtle excuse to leave a friend’s birthday. A hesitant farewell to a mid-afternoon mistress. Or a sincere adieu to a parting lover. And it is all masked by the eloquent lie that we shall all see each other again. But then, I never saw her again.
“I don’t know what to say,” she confessed, almost desperately, when I still cared to listen. And if I had any sense in me then I would have admitted to myself that she couldn’t say anything. Because even if she had, I doubt that I had any courage left in me to listen. For as much as I loved her I knew that my love was but an echo in an empty cave, cursed to reverberate off the walls, endlessly, until its very sound was thinned and finally silenced. I could not hear her; not anymore. And for months now, she dared not hear me.
“Must you have loved her in such a painful way?” a friend had asked me one evening.
And the truth, and though I did not tell her, was that I could not love her in any other way.
I’ve been asked to put my pen down, and to set this aside, for my own sake if no one else’s. And though these words have begun to play like a broken record into a lot of your ears, it seems that I cannot help myself from writing about anything else. I do not forgive her, I admit, but that is because there is nothing to forgive. Goodbyes are never truly good, it seems, but they are natural. As natural as the way that one may love, and yet, may so candidly fall out of it.
I can remember that at least, if nothing else. And because of that I cannot say goodbye. Not like this. Not yet.
edited from the 'otter side'