I’m sorry

I’ve been using profanity on a regular basis since the 6th grade. At some point that year it occurred to me that there were no consequences for wielding forbidden words – no fire raining down from the sky, no spies reporting back to mother and father, no Santa Claus deducting good points from my Angel Kid score. This was the beginning of the end of my faith in God. I won’t bore you with the logical conclusion, the crises I imagine every youth the world over experiences to varying degrees. The Easter Bunny and Santa Claus are the first to go for most. By the end, abstract ideas like love and honor are under siege. The whole ‘You can be anything’ banner, an entire nation built on hope, the beauty of a clean slate, the leaving it all behind for a better life – it’s all shaken, it all slowly wrinkles with time. I wish I could say that the key to happiness is letting go of all these ideas, of realizing that we are but a finite shale on an infinite eternal dragon that blankets the sky as far as the eye can see – your faith in romance, your faith in all that was important to you slowly deteriorates and then shatters under the weight of your socially constructed Life. Afterward, every metaphor seems a cliche, and you can find no peace or hope in the tired words of old dead men. Nothing you say is new or interesting. I wish I could say that letting go heals you, that the breaking down ends with glorious rebirth. Nothing good can come from the day you realize that Love is not limitless, that it ends just as we end – with the death rattle, the choking last breath. And you spend all your time wondering, waiting for it to return, counting on it, seeking it, coveting your neighbor’s seeming retention of it, and then comes the lust, then the mystery of the other, the notion that there could be more to discover in other people. You realize, or do not realize, or choose not to realize, that you will never find it again, that who you supposedly love now is a cold choice, a reasoned machine-like solution to your loneliness, not an emotion for very long, not an adventure for as long as before. Your milkshake is all melted and the fuckers are all out of your favorite flavor. God and Capitalism and Future died years ago, but Love endured somehow longer than the rest, and you thought that maybe you were different than the rest, that somehow this person really was made especially for you. You ignore signs to the contrary. Your heart, now your engine, groans but you press on. Then, the creeping doubt, the long silences, the still being together but slowly becoming alone. And then, one day, you are alone. One day, the other has left, and you really do become a machine. You replace, replace, replace, reach, reach, reach, but there is no answer any more. Just consume and take what little joy comes from the lesser and more carnal pleasures of what you used to call your Life. I’m not looking for pity. I’ve been through it and so have you. You see, it’s a death. And it’s your fault. It’s my fault. It’s no one’s fault. It’s everyone’s fault. It’s the only mystery I have left, and it’s a curse. If you want a sob story, this isn’t it – this, my friend, is more than that. This is a deterioration. What this is, is a confession.