I said happy birthday because I want you to know that real exists - that realness does not vanish with absence.
Every time I reach out, it’s to tell you that I care and will always care, and this care is unconditional, no matter much hurt your actions and inaction has brought me. I see it for what it is, and understand why you make these choices. I’d say in my soft voice, it’s okay. I’d hold your face in my hands and tell you in all tenderness that it’s okay. Because when you love someone, it’s really okay.
I’ll still do the same things even when everything else tells me you’ve abandoned ship. I’ll follow through with old promises - like our promise of friendship. I’ll sit at the coffee shop and wait, because it’s a motion I must go through - I will not let pride or insecurity get in the way of my resolve to feel what I need to feel, and do what my heart knows it must do.
So I will go, unflinchingly, because it means so much for me to be sitting there in that moment in time, because I said I would. It’s my way of saying to the you who believes, and the you who no longer believes.. that you mean this much to me, and that will never change.
I’ll be there - in surrender to the weight of hope, loss and acceptance that I feel in equal measure.
I’ll sit there for the longest 15 minutes I’ll ever know, and it will pass.. the way you have passed on us, and the same way time has passed and will continue to pass.
I will not absent myself. I’ll be there again in the next year, and the next.
It’s my way of saying, I’ll always be here.
