you have to have a question
Why didn’t you come to see me?
Seeing is not believing. And believing is not seeing. I would feel compelled all the time, and not know from what. I hadn’t done anything. What was this for? So I analyzed the compulsions. I saw all the stories I made up. Once I knew them, I no longer needed to be there. I could be here.
But do you believe me?
I don’t know any better than you.
So why not come see me?
It wasn’t easy. I wanted to see you. But not there. You have to find your own way out.
What if I don’t want to leave? What if I don’t need to?
You’ve already left. That’s how we’re together now.
No, but I have to go back.
Ok.
I wish we met earlier.
And then what?
We would’ve had more time.
We still have time.
But I have to go back.
Does time stop when you go back?
Time between us, yes, it stops.
Why?
Because I can’t see you. I can’t hear your voice. I can’t touch you.
Why not?
Because I’m over there.
Why?
That’s where I live.
I’ll ask you another way.
Ok.
How are you living outside of the time we have?
I’ve been doing it for a while. It is my life. Sometimes it feels really good. And I’m an adult now. This is how you grow up.
So it’s simple.
No. I feel insane. I want to be a child.
Ah.
Don’t you feel that way?
I am that way.
Isn’t that really hard? Doesn’t that fuck your life up?
For a period of time I thought so.
And not just your life!
Well. I don’t know any better than you.
No, you don’t.
So it’s simple.
No!
Why not?
I want to have both. I want to be there and I want to be here. And I also want a third place, which is just mine.
Ok.
But it’s impossible.
Why?
I told you why.
Sorry. Say it another way.
If I try to be in all of those places, I’m going to fuck my life up, and theirs. And then I’ll be miserable, having fucked up, and maybe they will, and you will probably be fine but I don’t want to hurt you either.
Oh. What would happen to you?
I would hate myself.
For having hurt other people.
Yes, people I care about. And fucking up my life.
But not for having hurt yourself.
I don’t know what that is.
Hurting yourself?
Abstractly, I know what that means. But I don’t know. I have a life. Do I have a self?
Well, both you make up.
You make up a whole life, a whole self. Maybe haphazardly, by accident. Still, you become attached. You bring other people in, maybe haphazardly, informally, and you become attached to them, too. You make up another life with all this in mind. Eventually, you can only envision this life because it works pretty well. You look around at other lives and you think, this one might be as good as it gets, and it’s pretty good. And then something happens outside of time. It’s spectacular. You sort of don’t believe it or trust it. But it’s so good, you know it’s happening. And then the life. You have to pick up your self and go back there. Make your bed, call your parents, go to that dinner, pick up the dry cleaning, make good on all the very good promises. All the things that make things ok. You have to do them because to not do them would be insane. You make something up and then it’s alive. I can’t.
…what? You can’t what?
I don’t know. But it’s not simple.
I think you do. Simple can be terrifying. Complications can be protective. If I can’t work it, I don’t have to face it. I used to think most people don’t really like to talk because they aren’t interested. Because they aren’t curious about what could be said. But then I realized that it’s because it is too simple to state the truth. You may feel it. You may know it. But it is so revealing, so pure to come out and say the thing. Safer when everything is just beyond you. You can feign simplicity with omission. But really so many of us are ruled by the ease of complication. I can’t, I’m busy.
So why am I here?
You keep finding yourself here.
And why?
I don’t know any better than you.
But you have to. Why do I come to you?
I think you have a question.
I keep asking you questions and I’m still confused.
I think it’s the having of the question. Something about that. You could see.