a graveyard
his name was M[redacted]. (his full first name is redacted out of respect for his privacy, but i really, really want to tell everyone his name, i really want to tell everyone he was real, he was here.) it feels so wrong & limiting to call him my ex-best friend, my ex-anything, he should still be here and the 'ex' really puts it all firmly in the past tense. i loved him, the only reasons i don't now are that time passed and i was forced to do something resembling letting go to survive.
he loved me, too, at least i'll bet he did. we were only in a college class together for a few months, he kept showing up to my house even after that, to hang out for hours, even though he lived hours away. he showed up late to my birthday but stayed longer than anyone else, and he got me this cool CD that i didn't listen to until two-ish years later (2023 --> 2025). the way we talked to each other, it was like even my shitty abusive parents liked him and could tell we were gonna be best friends for life. but that's just not how it happened, y'know? (he isn't dead, by the way, not last i checked. he's just gone in a way that amounts to the same thing, after all.) anyway, though, if all that's not love, i dunno what is.
he was an asshole. (that's a bit of a joke 'between' us, even after all this time.) he called himself a rat. we argued with each other for fun, and it was fun. he was blunt, and sometimes the things he said caught me off guard, or frustrated me, that was true, but he was also really gentle with me. i didn't know to describe him as gentle until i was talking to someone else about everything that happened, but i showed this other person how he talked to me, and they used that word, and it blew my mind, 'cause they were right. he was gentle. he was kind. and not just with me. that bird in his hand? he was gentle, kind, with that bird, too. i always felt safe with him. he said he didn't care about shit, but he was wrong. he was wrong, about a lot. he thought he was so ugly, 'whole time he was the most beautiful man i'd ever laid eyes on. his eyes were like a sky full of stars and licorice and they held the same colors as the cigarettes he smoked -- as he stood like twenty feet away, possibly afraid he would contaminate me, or maybe he was just shy -- and the leather jacket he wore. his laughter, if i could've measured the noise of it visually, with something like a seisometer, i would've tattooed what came out on my body. he thought people were replaceable, but not in the sense that he didn't think life had value, no, i think he knew it has a lot of value, i think he watched, over years and years and years, as people grew apart or pushed each other away and found new friends or lovers to fill some hole that was left behind and he was tired of the carousel. i guess he thought not that people were replaceable, but rather that people were frequently replaced. he told me he thought genuine relationships were something you were only afforded as a child. he had a soft spot for children, and dogs. he thought most people were selfish. he loved his sister more than anything. he asked me what i thought of people, the world, everything, he always wanted to know what i thought. he was a cynic, but he took a look at me, my goofy face, my refusal to give up, he sat down on my couch, it became our couch, and he felt safe there. (until--) he liked dinosaurs, and Moral Orel, and Oyasumi Punpun, and Disco Elysium and another game called Cruelty Squad, he wanted to make games, and he was obsessed with philosophy, and (the last message he sent me was) he asked how i was.
he's gone. (he isn't dead, but he's gone, after all. a few people have told me he might come back, but i'm not waiting for that. i can't. i just can't do that anymore.) i have mixed feelings about this. i was once incredibly angry with him, because of the way he left, and because there were a few things he said that frustrated me, the way he did, that i never got to argue with him about, the way we did, because he had left. sometimes i think nothing of it, y'know, because time passed and i had to survive and my memory is not that great. sometimes i feel guilty for being kinda over it, because he's not something i ever thought i'd think nothing of and that feels like a disservice to him. sometimes i feel guilty for not being completely over it, because holding on this long feels like a disservice to him. sometimes i feel like it was yesterday, and i feel pathetic in comparison to both him and who i was when i knew him, because i lost so much of myself since i lost him. sometimes i feel like i'm still not done talking to him. god, our talks were like magic. sometimes i wish i could've died, back then, when it happened. i wanted to back then too. it wasn't his fault then, and it's not now. it's something i'd already been feeling, something i still feel. so this isn't a shrine, to him. it's a grave, for both of us. i thought he died, i wanted to die, we both lived, but maybe, sometimes, we didn't. lying in the dirt, the mud, both of us, looking up at a sky full of stars. and it's not scary, i always felt safe with him. it doesn't feel scary. it feels like rest, and solidarity, and memory
