Death and the Devil

07/12/1804

My dearest beloved,

I’ve never been as isolated as I am now. There are countless people around me including you, somber and low, with the occasional and ingenuine giggle to wolf down the solemn, --I can hear it crystal clear-- why, I’m not isolated in that way. I’m isolated in the sense that I’m alone with my twirling head of newly found perspective and thought, while incapable of any movement, voluntary or involuntary, and I have but no choice besides wolfing down that solemn alongside each of you.

I mourn for myself as you mourn for me.

Once upon a time, I’d escape the bustling diner halls to sit in a silence that would allow me to think of you, to picture you, my darling, because I missed you so sincerely when you were too far to hold. I’d laugh and then sob about the man you turned me into, as you’ve certainly swept me off my feet right when I had glued my soles to the core of our earth. Yes! You came along unexpectedly, and a prick of your finger was enough, a coincidental meeting of our eyes. It was no challenge to you to bring to us a captivating beginning on the way to our eternity.

You didn’t even have to try. Oh my, it was simply known: there’s no paradise greater than us, love. Who, if not mad, would part ways from it willingly?

It’s for that reason, I deeply apologize that it’s come to this. I dream for it to be any other way, you know that to be so, and you know just as well that I am powerless before the hand of the universe’s unlawful strategy. A dreadful 30 hours it has been and will be until the darkness consumes me whole, in one daunting bite. How agonizing it is, Elizabeth, that the last catch of my dulling ears are the screams of your heart pounding into the depths of your intestines. You’re your own bully and your own victim. You’re filling yourself with black smoke. You’re on fire from the inside. You’re making me go frantic!

Perhaps it was a bad routine we’ve come up with over the years. We’ve grown used to searching for strength by being weak together, but for a drastic while you’ll be alone. If only I can tell you to take care of yourself. You keep that up, you’ll get sick! My wasting away is no excuse for you to pause being your very best. I’m flattered that I have your concern, I can’t describe it to you, but don’t worry. I won’t be offended if you value yourself first.

Boldly beautiful, in great comparison to any other we have come and have not come across, you win every single time. All you, as well. That wasn’t ever anything to do with me. Of every fabulous outlook of life you’ve had that was painfully above my existence and being, you must’ve learned that by now, correct?

It’s rather embarrassing, however, that I’m not the same as you are, the kind truly created for legacy, having a story to be told. I’ve lived terribly narrow-minded toward what didn’t count nor amount, when I had you, the entire world, the only thing that mattered, right beside me all along. My zero-tolerance to contentment had blinded me, my sweet Betsey, and here I am like this, near-to scrapable, my single discovery crawling close to utmost importance having been learned a day ago.

I thought of myself as intelligent, yet I was gravely mistaken and I bask in the humiliation of it. I am an infant in the world of smart, and figuring that out was overdue forever ago. Only during this unsought isolation have I realized a thing or another that’s real. Everything I’ve educated on and on about is useless but this; when death is hovering over you, life does surely flash before your eyes.

You, a person of high status and mind, may say it’s illogical, ironic even, or nothing but a saying that calms and comforts from fearing the mystery and the unknown, but I believed it at the beginning of my end and I believed it at the end of my end, and I’m telling you, it’s true. I’ve been there all on my own, all by myself.

Believe me when I say it explains much, my darling. It deserves to be believed!

I’ve figured it out. I have gotten to the bottom of it all, of things you may have wondered too.

Why people who floundered about like me, writers, are so often inspired to compare death to a remembrance, a fast walk down memory lane, and not a hazy figure that appears shyly, peeking over street signs, at the end of an empty roadway, barely in eyes reach. Why it’s happened several times before, and why there will continue to be a tiny portion of ourselves that pass on when our loved and admired ones do, just like there is a snippet of ourselves we freely, unconsciously take on amongst our habits, a granted permission that the ones we care for live inside of us when they must leave us behind. Why grief is a form of love --a love that is contained within us, that no longer has a place to go, and why heartbeats that cherish each other in every one of its thumps are the very heartbeats that make the world as we know it, go ‘round, thus spinning the slightest bit slower when such loved ones are lost.

I guess deep down I’ve always known. I just couldn’t be sure until it happened.

And still, despite it being thoroughly explained to me, it didn't dawn on me how I expected it to. If I must admit, I don’t know what I was expecting, but who does, love? Who does? Have you done so? There is not much to be anticipated for what has not been experienced, and death is not something that we as a people work to one day excel in, --no, not one bit-- but while I was standing there, greatly deprived of being granted the time to decide what to do --heck, there weren’t choices to be offered me, regardless! It’s common sense its trample cannot be handled, I had not a second to run until my legs went numb, and it didn’t have a strength I could tame-- I was staring down an irritatingly slow-motion bullet.

It was staring at me more-like. It did have all the control, after all. I was absolutely nothing before it. Utterly and horrifyingly helpless I had become!

And life flashes before my eyes, alright. Oh, most definitely, but it doesn’t consist of the building blocks of my childhood stacking up into events of adulting. I don’t see myself as a teenager that held cringe and decencies alike, nor was it my achievements, downfalls, victories, and mistakes. It had nothing to do with my ups and downs.

No, no. I saw the answer to every ‘why’. I saw you. The sole epitome of life.

You, the woman I fell for like I was in a trance, right when I was convinced I was dead-end hopeless. The miracle that became known as the pillar of my sanity and my everyday well-being I couldn’t go a day without. The golden, magical, sparkling diamond that can take every credit for keeping me afloat, a voice in the back of my head that saved me when I was centimeters from giving up. The very best at forgiveness when I missed the mark of perfection and the only motivation I had that made me want to change for the better because I knew that there was no one else out there on this planet deserving of you. The breath behind the smile that taught me every other worthy thing I’ve known.

Consider your encouraging sayings, infinite. How sunshine wasn’t always the goal, for example. The heat on our skin was surely an irritant that made us long for the cold covers, a summer hibernation that we only pulled off getting through because we had each other, yet the cloudy days prodded us with loud lessons, the happy kind, shouting to appreciate the little things. It had flicked this hidden switch in us, a switch neither of us knew we had, and suddenly we desired to do more than survive, but live embraced-misfit style, as we pleased. Splendidly, yes, we learned to live the life that made us remember what joy was. Rainy evenings weren’t clichés anymore, but a refreshment that chilled through our clothes and warmed through our hugs, and snowy mornings called for blankets, hot chocolate and many more blankets galore, of course, after the snowmen, snow angels, mittens and red noses.

You, oh, breathtakingly delightful you. You are a Schuyler and it shows. You made me feel every single thing that could fall from the sky, every single color that it could be, and not one of them was bad. Not even for a second.

Until now, that is, but that’s not your fault. You won’t say it out loud, humble and modest woman, but you know that almost nothing ever is. Looking up at it today, for the first time in forever, it was a curse to have the ability to see, and I’m sorry --ashamed-- to ruin the tradition that was ours. Of every form of weather that passes by, it had to be a sunny day, symbolic of the worst kind for us two. It’s like destiny wasn’t even giving me a chance.

It intended to kill me, and it did.

Impaled and bleeding, I had collapsed to the ground, no barricade within gravity to stop me. When I thought I couldn’t collapse into the soil any further, I sunk further into it. I dug my own grave since then, engulfed in quicksand I couldn’t escape from. That was it. I couldn’t change it. There was no turning back. This was my fate, regardless of how much it stung and still stings to leave you behind, more than the wound itself does.

I’ll never forgive the world for this. I’ll never forgive myself for this.

I’ve figured it out the hard way. A terrible misconception it is, to describe the Devil as some goatlike dimwit with a pitchfork, a tail and a couple of horns. It’s an inaccurate understatement, the finest offense of any other depiction. He’s a dragon, a lion, and a deceiving angel of light whirled into one. Someone destructive, fierce, a sick, sick illusion with a sweet goody-two shoes facade to lure you into his trap. A spirit version of a creep with so-called candy in his van from the 21st century beyond me, and God-forbid, beyond you.

Worse than all that combined, he’s someone who gets in the way of love. Someone who forces me to wonder what I could’ve been with you if I was allowed to breathe for a little bit longer, but blocked me from every side before I could experience it. A heart-shatterer. An agony-offerer. A death-whisperer, and a shameless one at that.

That wrathful-being asked for this to happen. I’ll be remembered from here on out as the loser of a dumb duel because I fired upward and not at him. I’ll be the weakling because I was afraid to feel my opponent's lack of pulse not-throb beneath my fingers. I’m the lifeless one because I chose not to be a killer, asking myself who I’ve become for the rest of the days I don’t have.

I-- no, we came out of it robbed and I can do nothing but pray in my few moments left. I can pray the bullet I fired never comes down, but that it’ll leave a mark on the moon or perhaps a star. Pray everyone in this country alive and born a million years from now knows I have no regrets and I did what had to be done. Yes, pray you’ll remember that we’ll see each other in a better world. You, the one who told me I dedicated myself to my work like time counted backwards. Now it really has, hasn’t it?

Goodness, I don’t want to come to terms with an end.

How about this, instead? You were always right. You built that reputation amazingly. Awe-inspiring to the highest degree is what you are, and it’s my sin that I didn’t awe you more often. Always right, always right, always right then and onward, I’ll rest assured that at least some things will never change, even when I’m away.

“I love you, Alexander,” you whisper to me, lips to my forehead, your cheeks damp, lungs shaky. I’m aware of it, but I didn’t know it would hurt the way it does. Some would tell me to be thankful. Thankful that I had something that was hard to part ways with, but it numbs my body head to toe, an earthquake tearing me into shreds, no compassion for the pieces that make up my soul, or what’s left of it. Breaking down, I’m stuck on the idea that has been my foundation to fight for the extent I tried: ‘if I can come back for you, I will’ was what it once was, but it is now ‘if I could come back for you, I would’.

I look toward a fingers-crossed ‘see you later’ with everything I am, but I give to you a realistic must-be-given ‘I love you, goodbye’.

God, Eliza, don’t hurt for too long. It’s only a permanent slumber. What’s so scary about that?

Right?

-A.H.