Ordinary Person

I haven’t heard from you in months. I hope you’re well and only wish the best for you. You foxtrotted into my life, burning brightly and setting the dance floor of my fate on fire. You changed things; introduced me to Jeff VanderMeer and Anne Rice; imprinted your word on my heart, and then left, but you come to life in my mind when I read the texts you sent me; parts of you drift through my consciousness like shooting stars in an empty sky when I recall our phone conversations.

I miss you and wish an out-of-body experience took you to me when I spend lonely nights frightened because all I see then are light brown curtains and beige cupboards. There’s a panopticon in my head, and my thoughts lie imprisoned in tiny cells, starved and emaciated. I wish I could pull the structure down and torture the guards of paranoia the way they’ve tormented me.

You’re the most intelligent woman I’ve known, with a mind as sharp as an Obsidian blade. Your rational approach to each problem you faced in life inspired me and made me want to abandon my reckless impulsivity. I look at things in shades of black and white. It’s fight or flee. You look at something from various points of view, running five streams of thought simultaneously and steering them with the elegance of Zinedine Zidane controlling a football. I miss all the advice you gave me. I forget how you never let yourself get more perturbed than you should be.

Time and distance separated us, but our thoughts aligned, and this kept our relationship alive. It’s beautiful when two people who’ve never seen each other create synergy by the union of their intellects. It’s fascinating when emotion adds depth to this union. It’s mesmerizing when this union transcends to something almost spiritual because of that unseen element: the soul. You were my best friend and my confidant. I shared things with you I don’t tell people even though they think my life is an open book because of the pseudo-confessionals I write.

You were intriguing with such a mature charm that most women I’ve known lack. I see people these days trying hard to be someone they’re not. I watch them try to lift their social standing, but you didn’t give a damn about that. Prestige, the limelight, the hoorahs and the whoops meant nothing to you because, like me, you saw it for what it was: a circus filled with showmen and outrageous acts; a freak show of incongruity and exaggeration; a nightmare masquerading as a lovely dream.

We may not have agreed on everything, but that only added spice to our relationship. Insipid flattery without emotion fuels most relationships. You can compare them to purple prose about the most inconsequential subjects—too much scent but too little substance. But we were different, or I’d like to think so.

In the end, we went our separate ways; perhaps that was for the best. I’ll never understand why we grew apart, but there are variables to every circumstance that we can’t control. So, I’ll end this by telling you how I’m doing using droll self-mockery: I’m living my life, smoking and popping antihistamines. Sometimes I wish this plane would crash because I can’t be bothered controlling it anymore, but then sometimes a cigarette drag followed by a sip of coffee makes everything worth it!