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A Letter To My Best Friend
Take me baby or leave me. The latter was not supposed to be for us.
You said you need space. For someone who preaches the importance of boundaries, I respect your request and the same time I still struggle with how you could need more space than you already have. I am 4,357 miles from you, we speak barely monthly, and yet space is still what you need. From me.
We say we are nontransferable, but I see the transfer. I feel the transfer. I feel everything. I know, because you told me so. We say, “take me or leave me.” I am the one that the physically left. I am always leaving. Maybe in my physical absence, you felt I left you. I did, but not behind. Even in this space I carry you with me. Not behind. Not once. Not never.
You are my life. My breath. The branding of our us-ness is located just between two organs, my lungs and my stomach. An unintentional placement that, in this space, reminds me that you are my air and that you fill me.
We sing, “Take me for what I am.” I feel everything. I hear your voice in my head saying it to me every time I want to pick up the phone, “You feel everything.” It plagues me. A quality that has benefited me so much has done so much damage to us. You don’t feel everything. You are stoic. A force. You hide your pain and instead carry the burden of others. You’d rather help them than help…