January 20, 2008
We weren't supposed to, in regards to our respective partners, and we both knew it. We weren't even supposed to think about it but it was a lingering fact that both of us needed it -- and that was the part that we, surviving in our separate worlds, could not ignore. And, besides, it was a chance meeting, unplanned, though we both could see the glimpse of insuperable truth in each other's eyes that this place has been the place we were seeking for some time.Initially, I only wanted to tell him to walk away. Turn around, go along, say good-bye, forget this now -- before I lose myself completely in this magnetism. My hands seemed to beg to act all on their own, desperate to reach out to make sure it was real, to make sure he was solid and strong and genuinely weighted on the same ground as I. I wanted to to be sure but I settled for simply being taken into his line of sight. I settle for the same. Furtively surprised that he didn't walk away.
He had a million things to say, a million burdens to release and, as I had known he would, he needed to start slowly. But that's okay, I told him, for I had all the time in the world. That's when he knew without doubt that he needed this -- the opportunity to just let it all out to someone disconnected directly from the madness in which he has been swimming, to share with someone he knew would always care, who would hold his words with the greatest alacrity but would never release them from this supreme secrecy. He needed to pour it out -- the fear, the anger, the frustration, the stupidity, the impatience, the imperfections, the guilt, the everything.
And I was like his black hole. That massive, mysterious space in which he could drop anything into. I inhaled all of it, spun it around, wrapped it all up and would eventually walk away without threat, without expectation, without demands for such private information. The outside confidante, the secret journal which he could write in without leaving behind an ounce of proof, the keeper of all those things, big and small, which he could only allude to before but never really explain.
Somehow, with me, it was safe, though neither of us really knew why.
It was freedom.