Pain and Love are Synonymous Sisters

I don't remember the first time I saw you in any other way than a vague memory. A snapshot that may have been constructed later, simply from what I had been told. Or maybe it is authentically my own. I'd like to think that. A piece uncovered from my subconscious. And if that's true, were you wearing a surgical mask? Is that just how I imagine it should be or is this image really mine? It would be my first memory of you, and I swear I do remember, yet I'll never know.

I think the same of remembering your voice. That I stopped crying the moment I heard you say my name for the first time truly here. Yet how often that voice would illicit tears to come. The irony in that, a million or more tears shed somewhere in that strange place between love and rage and pain and wishing we were different enough to be safe together. But the buttons to push are as second nature as breathing in both of us. I do remember 11 years when that hadn't yet been. That's the time I always want to go back to and stay, forever. Because I had your love without the attachment of the pain induced in your words and terror of realizing someday you would die. Those things didn't exist in this time and place, and I miss what I do remember there more than I could ever explain. Words fail in feelings so often.

I remember the words between us full of undying loyalty and love. Even loving each other through the words filled with venom. The loyalty and love through venom felt stronger in a way not despite but because of. Is that what they mean when they say a love is unconditional? And the regret instant for what I had said and somehow knowing your regret was just as instantaneous. Yet we couldn't stop them from continuing to pour like poison despite it. For decades each trying to break the pattern and the place we fell to long ago. We can't change and we can't escape, and if we stay here, we will kill each other slowly. Yet if we go, we will die of broken hearts. Pieces of our hearts shattering to emptied spaces. Knowing that the space I hold and those I lack are there because of you and yet there is a space for you to come back to because I can't help it. Once you have space in my heart that goes that deep, there's a reserve sign hanging for you forever. Nothing and no one else can take away that empty spot.

But wash rinse set fire repeat. We burn together and somehow burn apart. I don't feel safe with you and I don't feel safe without you. Forever tied through blood yet, will there be a time when there will be enough to replace what binds and it breaks? I already know my answer and yours. There is more than blood alone. Bonds have been broken through far less than what we have done. So it is just a matter of why. Why can't I break free and why don't I want to? Why in the fuck don't I really want to? Is that what love actually means at its most naked truth?

I can't say for certain that I remember the first time I saw you but I know I will remember the last if the natural order allows and/or I don't willfully disrupt it by leaving first. I dread that day and try to push it away because glimpses shatter me irreparably. How could I go on without you to hurt me and love me just as much? The hurt is only there because of the love. And it's one of the deepest hurts I know, because it is of the deepest loves I know. So I pray to those gone away that on that last day we will a least be in a space of only love for each other and pain of saying "See you later" and this time, knowing it's actually Goodbye. Hate and love cannot truly coexist. I never have and never could hate you. Pain and love are synonymous sisters. Twins that get confused for the other. One would not exist if the other didn't. And they play to confuse you. Yet love will always end with pain. Grief the final act. And we haven't truly died to each other yet. I know we never will.