each time i try to finish this out, to leave a footnote that'll be an introduction, because of the way these things are structured, i get stalled. i'm not proud of any of this, but i erased so many things that i cared about, i feel like i need it here. or it will be something that never happened at all.

it's this dumb romantic notion i've got. i wanted the end of the movie, where you see the setting in panorama and you start to think about what it will be in a decade or five or a century. where the events you just saw become a story. stories by their nature get forgotten. most don't even get a proper telling, and i wouldn't even attempt that - even with the benefit of hindsight now. they get lived, and generally you have to be happy with just that.

i wanted it to be a long story, i wanted it to mean something. i'm never going to know, now, if it meant anything to him. at this point, i think about the nothing that happened, the fraction of a possibility, and i think that's gonna be the best story in my biography. 

i doubt i got the best of him, but he got the best of me. when i go running now, i think about him. when i write something. there's this half-conscious hope that if i managed to be impressive enough in some regard, if i managed to be special, something would click into place with karma or the universe and he'd reappear in my life. maybe material, maybe somewhere i could actually see him. it's a foolish hope but it's what i get by on now.

fool though i made myself, that's the one thing i regret. i lost all fucking hope and just shattered. and in terror that he'd see how awful and ugly i'd become, i stopped talking to him, i intentionally vanished. now i can't undo that. no matter where i look, he's gone. maybe because he was hurt or pissed. probably because he was just tired of me.

you can build something up in your head and know completely that your fantasy is your own responsibility. doesn't mean you stop wishing for it to come true. 

in that widescreen movie ending i see when i think of him, it came true, of course. and instead of pathetically sputtering out, we burn together and our ashes hit the wind and eventually disappear. just another secret history where they'll someday build a mini mall. when you think about it that way, what really happened doesn't make much difference. there's something a little beautiful about a lost chance floating away.