Maybe Life Lies Elsewhere (4)

Wayne ends up so exhausted after his brain vomited all these tangled depths of rushing thoughts that he needs to step outside for a moment. He pulls open the door to his balcony and inhales the air that is rich of pine in the evening and the sound of the chirps that introduce the beginning of another night, followed by another dreadful but unavoidable task that awaits him in the morning. Wayne lights himself a cigarette and starts polluting the morning air around him with ragged exhales.
He remembers he ended the letter with confessing that he missed B very much. He thought everything they had together would be enough for B to still miss him as well after a year. How were you so sure? What did you expect? Wayne never would‘ve written it otherwise. But B doesn‘t miss him back. Instead they will be saying these words to somebody else now, their time with Wayne remaining no more but a turbulent taint of togetherness in the course of their life. He remembers their very first encounter, their minds and spirits already starting to attune to each other the moment they laid eyes on one another. The attunement, one Wayne has never felt before in his life, didn’t stop with the years that followed, until one end of summer, there seemed to be more pain and distrust polluting the leftover air between them. How was he so stupid to give in to a romance emerging from a very special friendship sooner than they realized, a romance that they both knew was eventually to be doomed and tainted by adolescent uncertainties, changes and an age-gap that Wayne never considered more than three meager years, just because it seemed so natural and easy-coming? Wayne thinks he must have been truly evil in his past life to have such a person stripped from him not only as a lover, but as a dear friend as well. And the moment he regretted this thought emerging and stretching out inside his mind was the same moment he started to feel like an idiot again.

His body was so tired after the restless, lousy few hours of sleep he had gotten the night, but his mind couldn‘t stand still. So, so tired.
Goodbye. He wants to say goodbye so badly. Maybe he doesn’t hate the memory itself, but the way it hurts. Maybe life lies elsewhere.

***

Neglected capacities
Gazing, painfully
Reawaken to the genuine virtue of life as we are forced to lead it
Reasonableness of keeping going
Weakness of will in relation to our highest ambitions
Mysterious to ourselves
Desensitized by familiarity
The things that give so much and end up taking so much more when gone
Gnawed by the worry that life lies elsewhere