Evil > Slow Hands

I had been drafting letters in my head again. It gets worse when I am left alone at work for hours at a time. I become fixated with certain expressions, obsessed with the idea that I can clarify matters. I become obsessed with the idea that I can clear my name, not my memory. I really wanted to write to him. As time has passed, he has brutalised my character to anyone who cares to listen. He portrays me as a drunkard, a heartless selfish manipulator. His descriptions of me have become more and more malicious as months roll on. I suppose the lack of contact gives him that entitlement to distort the facts. I have done the same thing, the only difference is that I am compelled to pay homage to our friendship. I am compelled to value the ambiguities and the complexities of it, now it can never be restored.

I suppose we can never change how they feel about us, but I desperately desire control of the way I am perceived. I hate that he hates me, that he feels compelled to punish me as he does. I hate how that punishment is indicative of his own pain and suffering and that, because of his mandate on the subject, I am forbidden from contact. It frustrates me immeasurably, as I find more and more people are invited to judge. They are invited to comment and dispel my actions. Yet, I am not granted the right to defend myself. Instead, I exist in the shadows, cloaked in my trade mark trenchcoat, averting their eyeline, weltering in the knowledge that they hate me. They really fucking hate me. But should I even really care? I never even liked him, in any case.

What is peculiar is that one evening, it all felt so different. Instead of obsessing over my endless mental drafts, I spent the night laughing with a work colleague. We spoke of the Medellin drug cartels, maquiladoras, Keith Richards and kittens. It was a remarkable thing, because I remembered what it was to be seen as person, not as a monster. It was a blessed feeling, to have some kind of implied assurance that they would never bully or exclude me as I have been bullied and excluded. Yet, in a completely different way, the evening revealed the true extent of my self-loathing. It revealed how much I anticipate strangers and acquaintances to witness the same breed of evil as he saw in me.

I'll stop. I promise I will. I'll stop with the hating and the mental drafting and my earnest willingness to believe the hype. I can't control much, but I know I can control something. Even if it's cultivating a delusion that the hate isn't as severe as it really is. That somewhere, at some point and some time, he remembers all the laughter and affinity that I do. I hope, that in spite of everything, I will be able to convince myself of that fallacy. I hope that I will be able to live in the comfortable ignorance that he doesn't hate me as much he says he does. Maybe then, each night alone at work won't seem as painful as it ought to be.