Machines and Dreams
Prompted by Gabe, since he asked me a few personal things and wanted to know.
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“I’d like to see you cry,” you said in between laughs.
I paused for a moment and let it get quiet. “What is wrong with you?” I said, getting to the point where laughs become more like coughs. “Are you some kind of sadist? Or just one of those girls that gets off on that? Boys crying?”
“No, I just wanna see you cry. Just once?”
I was confused at the time, years younger. But that last part was a question, and that’s how I understand it now. It’s important that the emphasis was on the onceness, it’s important that it’s a legitimate question.
Because you genuinely were curious to know if I could cry. That was it—you wanted proof. You knew I wasn’t ever someone prone to histrionics: I was low-energy, impassive, hard to read and hard to know. A complete emotional plateau in comparison to your peaks and valleys.
I was less like a magnet pulling in with my poles and more of a lightning rod. I let it rain down and sorted it out. Stayed and stuck. Conversely, you pulled and shoved, shoved and pulled.
Just because I didn’t let loose, just because I didn’t have a kandy-raver phase or a druggie phase, doesn’t mean I was smuggling the lightning elsewhere. Not everyone conducts their electricity in bursts.
But you wanted to at least see the fumes from the fuel because the gears to this machine weren’t accessible. I had access to yours though, as if I needed it: I remember having the password to your journal at one time and finding a private entry. You gave me the password a long time ago, but you forgot. I continued to poke through, and I stumbled upon something that talked about your wishes to get me “to open up more.”
I admit that I sometimes forget how stuck I am inside myself. I sometimes even feel as if my brain were separate from my person, my mind split from my body. I have to remind myself that there are people outside, and letting them in takes a bit more than just writing. Communication is not only done through writing, not with most people, and I needed to realize that you weren’t included in the minority.
If it makes you feel any better, I’ve been getting anxious lately. I’ve been bolting out of bed, with my unconscious battering against my ribs. Some kind of shock is happening to the system. So maybe the lightning does go somewhere. I just don’t know how that works yet.
Drifting apart means realizing our differences and the magnetic opposite-pole attraction isn’t strong enough. I didn’t have to prove to anyone that I’m not a robot any more than you had to prove that you’re indestructible. You were the one with more metal in you—braces, music, surgery—anyway.
