Mid August, 2026
Colorado

Rockies, day two. Altitude has nothing on you. You would hike with me - encourage me, right? Fitting right in with my family, maybe even leading - with my recovery. I wouldn't be tossing on this shitty pull-out couch, alone.

After all these years - decades even, as you must understand by now, from the moment I met you and faced your rejection that you could never remember - do you still have nothing to say? I know, in our final, brief, stolen talks, I extracted the bare minimum, then had to stop - at pain of court order. You chose him, because he would make you happier, you claimed. Not because you thought that I didn't choose you, you tried to assure me. What else could I do, particularly when you cut off that final, scariest path for us to talk? This isn't real, now, is it? The same as all my other pointless emails that you never saw.

My twenties were a desperate attempt to run from you, towards someone like you. I had some small pathetic hope that you weren't that special. As I finally crashed against the reality of my failure, in my early thirties, you caught me - or tried to? I really don't understand what you did. Why did you have to give me more false hope?

We are over the hill now. My deathbed comes into view. Is there anything you can say to help me salvage something of a life before it's all over? Can you really tell me, in your own words, with conviction, what I barely extracted in our end - now years ago? Can you acknowledge my experience, my need? You claimed that most important spot on my quilt from that first moment decades ago. And you seemed to really like me, too, especially after you reached out again, a decade later. I never used the word soulmate before then. I thought we might have beaten all the odds, finding the best kind of love that would make the whole world jealous ("once in twenty lifetimes"). Can you tell me you never saw that? Or that he really makes you even happier?

I still have everything, even the physical - even here, they never leave my side, nor my mind. Your final refusal, which I still can't open - surely just inane scribbles of need, albeit handwritten in desperate designs. I can't help but worry that you cut me off precisely because we are supposed to be together. You have to blind yourself to avoid me.

Because that works for you, not me. One of our differences, but not a fatal incompatibility. If anything, it's my Achilles heel - I can't avoid the truth. I'm not trying to drag you down to experience my misery, I'm just asking for help.

Can you please say something?

---

May Day, 2026

helpless
even with
both
parents


"If that lawyer walked through the door and asked you to marry?"

I knew the answer, instantly -- I face this horrible truth several times a day. I can't lie, but why make others face it, again, too?

"C? We haven't talked in years. We have no relationship."

It didn't matter. Only you deny the truth, which is what makes it so horrible.

"You do love her."



I hate that it revived a spark of hope. Because if that insane miracle ever came to pass, and I didn't die of a heart attack on the spot, I could finally prove it to you. All your doubts and my pain couldn't stop the truth.

You are wrong, and always have been wrong.

All dramas lead to you, C - for me. No bargains, or petitions. I will never see you again.

You are free. I am not your soulmate.

I am damned. You are my mine.