I keep you alive for me.

Everybody wants it. Everybody looks for it. The big L word. We’re all so anxious to get it; then we let it go because we’re too afraid to keep it. I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately. Ironically not because I want it, but because I stopped believing in it. Maybe there are just a limited amount of times in a lifetime that we will be granted a chance for love and after we’ve carelessly exhausted our chances, we’re done, there are no more left. Lately a dear friend of mine respectfully warned me not to get bitter, not to let my hopes fall through. “Don’t let other people’s misery affect your gracefulness. There are good men out there. You oughta believe it”. Keep the faith. Be strong. Don’t let the sourness of your disappointment get in the way of the potential for love you own. Somehow the feeling that words are only words prevails all the good intentions I am able to pull together at this time. How many times can one give love away without ever getting the care he struggles for?

Perhaps the worst moment of all is that precise instant in which we finally realize we have believed in someone who never was the person we thought they were. A phantom. A ghost. A fictional character that at some point in our life resembled all that we ever wanted, all that we ever needed. He never existed. He was a shadow made of my wishes, the resolution to my disenchantment, the oasis after four years of incessant drought, the final award I had so strongly deserved for all the times I was let down. And then he let me down. Again, and again, and again, and again. Perhaps my worst fault of all is to always want to see the good in people, their good intentions, my relentless need to believe that dishonesty and concealment could not be what inherently moves people from within. Then, of course, I promptly get disappointed, until the time I stop believing completely. Then I flee. I leave no trace behind me. I change address. I change state. I change phone number. I vanish. When words are not worth uttering anymore, there is nothing left fighting for. What are we fighting for? You had no time, I had no patience. You had no intention to make this right. I had no time to waste after you. You had no love for me. I had no more faith in you. You put up all these foolish walls I got tired of climbing. We reached the deep end and couldn’t swim through the shore. We drowned. I made it. You made it. We went down.

There is nothing left to lose. My last words to you were exactly what they sounded like, my last words. I wish you happiness, and joy, and love, and success, because in a corner of my mind I still see the man I met the first time I saw your eyes. Inside of me I still want to believe in that boy who held my hand at the San Diego museum of arts, the boy who got me a pillow to keep my leg up when I sprained my ankle, the boy who took me to see the waves crushing against the cliffs and gave me his jacket because the weather was chilly. In reality, I am afraid that, if I let go of that memory of you, a part of me will die permanently and I will never be able to revive it. I do it for me. I keep you alive for me. I say goodbye for me.