On What We Owe

Sometimes when I talk about you, which I do, I do talk about you, they ask me if I’m sad or if we still talk. And my answer is always the same. I’m not sad and we don’t talk. It is sad, but I am not sad about it. I hope this isn’t sounding wrong. I mean it in the way, in which the circumstance itself is sad but I do not walk around owning that sadness. I suppose more than anything it is an unfortunate thing to be a person with so many feelings like us. Because I shared such a large part of my life with you and now have nothing at all by which you are a part of, simply because that is confusing and messy and we only have so much time in this life. You told me once, I do not know where I would put you. And I do not know either. 

I was reading some pieces from near the time in which we went our separate ways. I talk about myself as being split in two, this me and the other me. And there is such a massive sense of being betrayed by her, for the both of us. I think I believed somewhere along the line that I’d broken our allegiance to one another. I’d lost sight of the things we’d set our sights on. But this seems all now like strange technicalities to a game I no longer play. And I guess this is the question I am turning over in my palms today, and that is what do we owe ourselves? Is my becoming someone new a declaration against who I was before? And who of the me that was an us to you, who of her is still here? It all gets very complicated when you try to spell it out I suppose. 

I’ve tried once or twice to lay out the cartography of our life together. I wonder if it all feels as far away for you as it does for me. I wonder if you think about it in the way you carry on with your life. I wonder if making eggs is ever a challenge or how often you sit in restaurants and hear my voice. I wonder how heavily you have paved over the roads we traveled together. Can it feel sometimes like I was never there? And when you talk about me, if you ever talk about me, do they ask you if you are sad and if we still talk?