I'm not saying I'm breaking up with you. I'm not. That's not what I'm saying. But clearly... I'm not giving you the attention you deserve. We both know that. But I'm just not... present, not here, in the way I should be. And that's not right.
You deserve better.
Back in the day, when it was just you and me? Throwing words on a screen, clicking that little green button, and announcing myself to an indifferent world? That was... well, it was stupid, and it was a waste of time, but it was also kind of fun (occasionally) and interesting (less than occasionally) and - most of all - necessary, as an outlet for all the everything that was flying around the inside of my skull but had no other way to get out. And we all know what happens if you don't start boring holes and letting the evil spirits out: madness and doom. MADNESS AND DOOM, Y'ALL.
Now, don't get me wrong: there's certainly an appeal to madness and doom, but having travelled varying lengths down that road I thought I'd explore an alternate avenue. So I typed. I sat alone, and I typed, and it made very little difference to anyone but me. And, y'know, in some ways that was okay, and in some ways that kind of sucked.
But. After a while, I found I wasn't quite so alone. I found that there were other folks out there who not only were sitting in the dark, typing on their own - albeit to a legit audience, more often that not - but who actually responded to the stupid things that I typed. And that was enough to keep me typing. To keep me here with you.
Until the day when it wasn't just you. When I was asked if I wanted to take my talents to South Beach type elsewhere, as well. And without thinking - humbled, abashed, flattered beyond all comprehension - I said yes. And in the blink of an eye, there were suddenly many elsewheres, all demanding my attention, all rewarding my nimble fingers and tenuous grasp of punctuation and sentence structure with that sense of contact, and connection, and the insatiable hunger for more. Always more.
You. You were left here. Alone, more often than not. Never forgotten, but never... well: rarely, first on my mind. On my agenda. Because for me - or the me that became here and there and everywhere in this strange little world - there was only so much time, so much energy, so many ideas that I had, or could access, or could generate.
I discovered: there are only so many places I can fail at any one time before it starts to bother me.
So I pulled back, a bit. Other homes that had welcomed me in - kindly, graciously, with open arms - but I had to step away. And still, even after that: three other places beyond this (beyond you) that I continued to call my own. Each one more than a space to think and write, but a collection of incredible people who I felt honored to know - to whatever degree - as friends and colleagues. I never felt less than an outsider, but knowing that somehow there was a place at the table for me...
It gave meaning to this. To all of this.
And you waited here. Patiently. Quietly. Without judgment.
You deserved better.
And now... even now, even as limited as I am and have become... it is still, somehow, too much. I feel myself failing everywhere, all at once.
I don't know what to do with this. I don't fool myself into believing it matters - to anyone, probably not even to me - but I don't know what to do. I've seen so many of my friends drop off and drift away over the past few years... some of my earliest friends friends here, others whom I came to know only much more recently, either drifting away with the pull of time and family and work and indifference, or choosing to actively drop the mike and walk offstage, once and for all. And I miss them, y'know? They float in and out of contact, but...
I don't know. I don't know what I'm saying, what I'm thinking. I don't think I'm deciding anything, necessarily. But I know it's not right, and I know it's not you. It's me.
And I'm sorry.
