kills me to kill you when I tell you that I felt it once, I can't feel it twice

My mind turns to the past, personal excavation, private excoriation made public, taking inward pain and turning it into outward expression and learning from it once it's part of the world. At least I'm on brand.

And I found myself rereading earlier missives from--and to--the fellow for which I've been posting my lettered outreachings. The penny had dropped halfway coding them up to publish, but I think it finally finished dropping tonight: I'm posting these letters from the far long-ago because I'm dealing with a situation that is in no way similar now...and is by the same extension, very, very similar indeed.



Sometimes the penny drops slowly, sometimes it drops out of sight too fast to see. Sometimes it simply melts from the incandescence of inner rage, or shatters into chips of ice from the inner chill.

Why am I worried? Because I am. Because I do. Because I see the possibility of someone else slipping away...not in the same way, no, not exactly, but...there is definitely more distance, and once more, I can't pinpoint the exact reason...except, with the virtue of hindsight, in this case, even, preserved written hindsight...I know the reason.

Or at least, I know the reason it happened then. And I can't go through this again.



And I know now what's been staying my hand--to have this talk with him? Means to bring up all these old insecurities and doubts, most of which I've brought up before, which has resulted in feck-all happening, always, and...stasis, I suddenly realize, while excruciating in every way, is, to my way of thinking, far easier to cope with than the stunning totality of loss.



But. Here's the thing. Here's the point I'm missing, and perhaps I'm missing it because it's been pointed directly at the center of my eye all this time: I cannot, I will not, know it's a loss until I talk about the possibility. It's not gone until I'm told it's gone. It's not gone until I give up.



Which sort of makes it Schrödinger's relationship, in a sense--is it alive at present? Is it dead? I won't know as long as I'm afraid to inhale and move forward, in some direction, even if it's away.



I don't want away. I don't want another loss. I deeply don't want to lose another collar. But as things stand, currently? I don't know what I do have, and I won't know until I ask. And since the last one was nearly entirely my fault for a variety of unhelpful reasons...is this one also?



Don't mistake my words on this. What I was asked to do was cause myself a great deal of temporary, brief pain to avoid longer-lasting, bone-deep agony. This is me, of course I didn't go for the quick excision of what hurt, I went for the festering unhealing, bandages over bandages, convincing myself they'd started out that red...nine years of it and counting, so far.

But that is the past. That is what was, Now, we deal with what is. So tomorrow, the great fear. Tomorrow, the end of stasis. Tomorrow...I ask.

"This is gonna hurt like hell..."

(Sims visited includes Aphrodite's Darkness, the Wandering Star, 3rd Eye Perceptions, Morbid's main store, Fugue in Briarhaven, and Be My Mannequin's main store.)