a separate peace

"Looking back now across fifteen years, I could see with great clarity the fear I had lived in, which must mean that in the interval I had succeeded in a very important undertaking: I had made my escape from it.

I felt fear's echo and along with that I felt the unhinged, uncontrollable joy which had been its accompaniment and opposite face, joy which had broken out sometimes in those days like Northern lights across black sky."

[johnknowles:a separate peace]

I have this passage memorized. it pulls, you know? in this interior way, that I cant explain. i push away. and sometimes i literally run away. i realized it last april. this fear that was always too slippery to name but pervasive and drenching. I always think of her when i think about a separate peace. she was my phineas. and i was hers. it was the first time i lost something that i was totally in love with. i still think about it–even though shes gone–the day she handed me that note. and then i think about the day that i gave him up. because i realized then what I had always known about her. he was so much better at living than i was. and all along i was sure that as soon as he realized it, he'd walk away. so i was always pushing. i would even bring it up, offer it to him, so that i'd be prepared. i made it so he wanted to leave. because i could never hate him. i could never hate her. 

so this is that fear. 

that face and its opposite. the moments when i think of her, i know she knows how much i loved her. and how much i wish for her. and when he tells me a story with his fingers all stuck together, all gesturing and specific, i know that joy. only its becoming less and less accompanied now. that fear, like that tree, with him, at least, are absolutely smaller––withered and completely shrunken by age. 

and i can say, with great clarity, how the northern lights look from here. when he laughs and gets excited, everything feels full and perfect. and the only thing im ever afraid of, is losing him, like i did her, in an irreversible, irrevocable way. because i know, that there would be no escape.