A couple of years ago I seemed to think that suffering a real, authentic heartbreak, the kind that restructured my relationship not only with women and myself but with reality entirely, made me a more interesting person. Somebody who had seen further and felt deeper. Who HURT more authentically than the contrived stories of loss that everyone else referenced, felt second-hand. Forget that: I had undergone the Real Thing! And so I was a more real person as a result. And perhaps in some ways I was. But not in ways that made me more interesting to others. But I did suffer a shock, a jolt, to my soul that felt more real than a needle jabbed into my palm. A necessary shock I think but not one that needs repeating. Most people experience their version of this, and each is convinced they are the only ones who have felt this pain; nobody else could possess the bravery to sink this deeply into a primal moment of the human condition, and this solipsistic sense of isolation is maybe what links us together after all… if only we could open the bars on the self-constructed cage and see it. But I also suspect this rite of solitary passage benefits us so long as we emerge from it. For just as the heady words of a man in love are uninteresting, so are those of one in agony. We all know what it is like to dream; that does not mean listening to someone bore us with theirs is important or meaningful. We want to hear how their lives changed as a result of that dream. That is where growth lives. And if we’ve suffered then we recognize when another is: we see ourselves in them. We read our words in their hopeless dramatic poems about fucking in the car, on a cliff, overlooking the ocean at 3am. Their self-indulgent glamorizing of the needle in their palm. It feels good to live there for a while doesn’t it? In a weird way (an understandable way), relishing in pain protects us from other pain. I am feeling this now. I cannot carry that cross because I am carrying this one. This one is heavy but it is mine: I own this one!

A thousand other people men and women both are living out their loneliness, either drowning in it or wading it. They are watching movies, eating cheap chocolate, playing video games, unleashing themselves on others over the internet, making art, breaking other hearts, seemingly all in an effort to find a way out - directly or indirectly - secretly enjoying it or publicly enjoying it but there is nonetheless a gratitude involved - I am a human being after all.

A mentor of mine, someone with whom I lost touch for whatever practical reason, once told me in his poetic way no shaman gets to fly before he is torn to pieces. It is not so easy to put yourself together again after you’ve been shattered. The payoff perhaps is that you then get to see the light of the world through the prism of each one of those shards, and it’s a far more beautiful light than before.

Words, words, whatevs. They make me seek a cigarette, a deal-breaker, a vice. A broken heart is not interesting. Shared trauma is not a substitute for compatibility. You are still a stranger to me but I can watch as through stained glass as you work your way out of it. So that if one day our positions are again reversed I can indulge myself with a bit more care and a bit more attention.

I want to keep writing so I will: a self-indulgence of another kind. Something to delay the urgent dissatisfaction of leaving something unfinished, knowing neither when or if I should wrap it up. Something is keeping me here on the edge between this chair and that bed. It’s the minty e-cigarette and the warm yellow light that illuminates this room, or the too-quiet battle music trickling out of the nearby speakers. Too-quiet battle music is a tragedy but this close to bedtime, I admit it is too loud.