Pulse

Another personal essay from a prompt. I wanted to dig into my time in New York, but not the parts that made me feel less than, sad or used. So I wrote about a friend, a quiet love.

Pulse

I never felt more alone than the nights I begged for sleep in the city that never did. Forced to confront the labyrinth of my own inadequacies. So I chased away the empty apartment with endless events, climbing a social ladder I had little interest in summiting. My friend's destination was the top, scaling with fascinating fortitude. I merely clung to it, terrified that if I let go, the violent sea of my own self loathing would drag me under, never to be seen again.

I don’t operate with a baseline of regret. I have moments I’m proud of and moments I’m not, and they are all a mosaic of me. I don’t regret the darkness. The wrong choices. I’ve always chased extremes, and basked in the wicked beauty of stark contrast.The echoes of my past reverberate through the corridors of my soul. Each footfall upon the cold, stone floor like a symphony of my darkest desires. To be honest, I embrace my darkest self. I wear that skin like a cloak of midnight velvet. I am both the architect and the masterpiece, a testament to the indomitable spirit that thrives within the embrace of absence. How could I ever appreciate the light without the dark.

Still, hedonism doesn’t need to be violent, I just didn’t get that memo in time. At its core, I never expected to live this long. It hadn’t occurred to me that longevity was an option. I spent so much of my life torn between dying to survive and then in those darkest moments, that eerie realm of haunting beauty, surviving my wish to die. Pursuing pleasure no matter the price seemed logical, maybe even necessary.

I don’t have regrets, but if I’d have had a bit more clarity, a reprieve of quiet in my sharp, unforgiving mind- I could have appreciated the gentle brand you left on my soul. I guess that’s what tonight was created for. I’ve never cared for writing tragedy, but sometimes you need to write what you know. I’m so lucky you taught me that beauty can arise from the depths of the most profound despair.

We were doomed. You were everything I needed in a time when I only saw myself through the glimpses of truth you opened in me. I wasn’t anything anyone needed. I was as useful as my connections. I had things people wanted, I had access they craved but you made me feel like maybe, just maybe I was the thing that was worth desiring. You craved me, and I you. You saw my monster, the real me beneath the layers of pomp and pretense and you drew them out. Most shockingly, once you did you never flinched, you said I was loved. Curse and all.

We were friends, sometimes lovers, sometimes depraved tangles of need and pain. We survived a distance that never closed, and still somehow you were there whenever I fell. We were the ‘soon’ that circumstance challenged, and destroyed. Never quite as real as we could have been, but in hindsight more real than the bodies that littered my bed, the ones I closed my eyes and pictured were you. The model from fashion week, the actor from Brooklyn, the ballerina in the bathroom. Their hands on my skin were a conduit for the boy in LA who dreamed about starting a theater company. The boy who dwelled in the depths of himself and wove a love so profound, it existed not in the tender ache of bruises from fingertips pressed into flesh, but in the ethereal gap between the heavens and the earth of words, where every syllable became an enchantment, and every sentence a whisper that dusted off my soul.

The pieces of you that intertwined with the pieces of me were all kink and philosophy. You pulled down my mask and ripped me open to my broken jagged core. As if your idea of the perfect lazy Tuesday was to wrap your tongue around me and fall for eternity until we were buried deep within the catacombs of my being. Then you’d show me you were broken too. We were both so beautiful. It terrified me. How much I felt safe with you.

We almost made it. Of course our catastrophe would be explosive though, that pesky third act. The house of cards, built upon fevered promises and whispered vows, finally collapsed under the weight of stolen desires, crumbling into ruins of shattered dreams, and when the dust settled, we were gone. As if spirited away by the darkness itself, condemned to dwell eternally in the realm of forgotten lovers.

Now, you exist as a fond memory. Your presence, a flickering candle amidst the suffocating gloom of my history. Like the ghosting of hot breath against my neck, your words reached out, stitching together fragments of hope and solace. My guardian demon. The wistful whisper of strength that reached me while the people I thought loved me, picked my existence over like scavengers as I lay bleeding out from a deadly fall. You needed me at my best, but forgave that all I had to offer was my broken. You freely gave the escape into healing and introspection I needed when I couldn’t stand to be alone with my own thoughts. You held me up to a mirror gently whispering what I needed to hear before the roar in my mind quieted enough for me to understand the words.

I don’t have regrets. You were my thready pulse when it was close to flickering out, and my rapid thrum when I needed the debilitating doubt of my desirability destroyed. If not for you, dear demon of light amidst the encroaching shadows, I would have been lost to the abyss. Those dark, twisting moments would have devoured me whole. You saw yourself as a monster, but you never realized how much you were my anti-hero. I needed a beast to fight the more deadly ones hunting me. It was through your own battle with the devil within that I discovered the strength to face my own. I whispered “Save me.” and you showed me I could save myself.

You got a devastating version of me however, and you deserved better. All my maddest edges and you still saw a friendship worthy of assent, and an ass fit for worship. I hope if I ever cross your mind, whatever worth you saw in me persists. As you flood my thoughts tonight, I know my anecdote has changed. Instead of a could have been, I’m seeing us for what we were. Not a footnote, but a beautiful, sorrowful chapter all its own. Not one defined by heartbreak or harm. Not a fire that ravaged through my self worth like so many others.

For the longest time, I was so focused on putting out the fires, and fitting the pieces back together- the ones who destroyed me held my wary gaze. I’ve stopped giving space to them now. Instead I’m giving the due to those who repaired me. Celebrating the ones who tried to make me whole. Each intricate shard, a testament to the hands that delicately pieced me back together. Carrying the imprint of countless souls, and among them, you hold a special place. Like a skilled artisan, your existence is tattooed on the masterpiece of my kintsugi heart.