The Third Child - Session 4

(Beep. Music fades in)

To tell you the truth, again, I don’t really understand the whole love languages thing that I keep seeing on the internet. Well, okay, I understand the basic principles. People hear and express love in different ways. Or we’re inclined to do so in different ways. And we can learn other love languages in the same way we can learn other spoken languages. Or written languages. (sigh) Okay, I don’t know the vernacular here. Or was that it? 

Sorry, I normally try to be so much more prepared for these recordings, but I just haven’t had the same energy about me that I used to. Which doesn’t entirely say much. After all, I’m perpetually tired, but what little energy I have in me is getting pulled elsewhere. And that shouldn’t surprise you. You know what is going on. You know how hard this is for me. For all of us. You know how hard this whole language learning process is. I mean, didn’t you try to learn a language in school? Isn’t that expected of people in a certain socio-economic class? Then again, I don’t entirely know what that life is like. I wasn’t in that class, true, but by a fluke of districting that’s the world I fell into. So I study Spanish and then Italian. There was some Latin in there too. Not everyone who’s raised Catholic gets that part, but it is part of my story. 

And if I remember correctly, your story includes French, doesn’t it? With it being known the language of love, there is ample room for a joke there, what with French being the language of love and all that, but I won’t take it. It wouldn’t be right to take it. After all, what’s there to gain by kicking you while you’re already down. You already know that this doesn’t come easily to you. Reminders aren’t helpful in that. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Part of you expected me to teach you, to tutor you, more like it. But I’m sure we both know by now that I can’t do that. I can’t give someone what I don’t have. And heck, maybe I got into the mess that I did because I tried to do just that. I tried to give someone something I didn’t have to offer, and I thought it was okay or that it would work out because I love her. I thought love could make everything right, but I guess I bought into the same fantasy that you had. It’s just sold everywhere. Isn’t it cruel how it’s being sold to children like it is? Or was. I mean, yes, a lot of things are marketed to kids that really shouldn’t be, but this one feels particularly vile. Because it’s not like we’re just out of our allowances when we buy into this. We’re out a lot of things. And we’re so much more vulnerable for the trouble. Our lives are left so much more delicate because we didn’t know we needed to build up defenses, fortifications, our own skin, as it were. 

I never thought I was thin skinned, for the record, so I didn’t mean it as an attack on you. Maybe you took it that way? I understand as much if you did, if that happened. Intentions and effects aren’t the same thing. But look, there is hardly a nasty thing out there that my own mother didn’t say to me in anger. I’m tougher than I look, you know? I had to be in order to get through my childhood and young adulthood and the ongoing relationship with her that I’m not fully ready to let go of even if I should. It’s everything else that’s weak. Or that leaves me vulnerable. It's the fact that I live in a bubble, a cloud that I modeled out of the images I was shown or that passed outside the window of my childhood home. Maybe I should have known it was an illusion, but clouds look oh so beautiful from a distance, don’t they? 

But then again, if you were to touch them, they’d dissipate, swallowed up by the air around them. And there’s something poetic in that. But the fact remains that they’re gone. And if they mattered to you in any way, you’re out of luck. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

We made our worlds out of worlds out of clouds, you and I. We built up our lives this way. Or not our complete lives. Just the part that was the most important to us. And sure, there’s an argument to be had that it shouldn’t have been the important, but what’s the point of splitting that hair right now? I admit there are so many people might think we’re wrong for thinking this was so important. And they will offer up any number of battle cries to that end, but in doing so, they’re talking past us. Not to us. So I’m not going to listen.

We’ve built our hearts out of clouds, and now they’ve been touched, we watch helplessly as the air swallows them up. And from that image, you perhaps wouldn’t have expected it to be as painful as it was, but it was painful. Because we needed that smoke, those scraps of something we did not know the name of. It is a part of us, a part we did not know was there.

Is that why we fight so hard for this? Fighting to restore what may very well be gone. Maybe. Pulling everything back together is the closest way to get back to the moment before it all broke. Or it’s the only chance we have, and it’s not even a real chance, is it? There’s no way to undo these things. If that were advisable. And I’m sure there are many who think it is not.

I shouldn’t pull other people into our conversation. I know. They don’t belong here. In some standards, they made this mess or made it worse. They all believe in the fairytale that seemingly destroyed us or set us up to be destroyed. And so, they can’t be expected to guide us along our road when they are too absorbed in their own.

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

I believe each path in life is different. I believe every individual is truly meant to have their own story. I believe the figurative molds we are pushed into are inherently inhumane. They are artificial, meant to stroke someone else’s ego or to serve them in some other way. I refuse to adhere to them. I tried. God knows I tried to trust my fortune in the hands of other people and their molds, and it failed me. I’ve been burned. Even by the soul I love. Because she didn’t realize how fragile I was. Because she was used to dating women who weren’t as fragile as I am. Because she expected something else of me.

I feel like I learned this lesson too late. I feel like I’m not putting it into practice by even having this conversation with you, even if I’m urging you to forget everyone else. Everyone who isn't me. Because yes I am willing to support your decision, but then again, I see aspects of mine in it. So there’s validation there. There’s comfort for the ego there.

But at the same time, I know you would have made the same decision regardless of what I said. You know what you want. And while you thought you needed a nudge, you only found comfort in one. 

(Music fades out and new music fades in)

Comfort is important, but a lack of it will not derail you too severely. Particularly when one is as determined as you. I took some pressure off, but I firmly believe you would be undeterred regardless of what I said.

And I envy that about you. That certainty. Even if it is certainty that you couldn’t recognize at first. But it was there. You are stronger than I am, you know? It may not be enough, but it isn’t nothing. 

(Music fades out. Beep)

The Oracle of Dusk is a production of Miscellany Media Studios with music licensed from the Sounds like an Earful music supply. It was written, edited, produced, and performed by MJ Bailey. And if you like the show, tell friends about it or the quasi-friends that are still on your social media feeds because social norms evolved before words did, am I right?