It’s been a little while since I was back here. A minute – two – ten – an hour. It’s been half a day, a whole day, three. It’s been a week – a fortnight – a cycle – a month. It’s been a season, a year, a decade. It’s been a generation, a century, an era, a millennium, an epoch. It’s been a while.
How have you been? Wait – don’t answer that. You know I ‘m not serious. I don’t really care how you have been, I’m only using that question to initiate your reciprocating action, in which you will ask me how I’ve been, which will allow me to unload on you, to brag about myself and my children and my spouse, to complain about my boss and my children and my spouse, to monopolize the conversation and to take it in the direction I want and to steer it towards your admiration of me for how strong I’ve been, for how amazing I am for how terrible all that has happened to me has been.
One thing I will definitely not do, rest assured, is take any blame for what has transpired. Oh, don’t you fret, none of this is my fault. It absolutely does not reflect poor judgment, rash decision-making, short-sightedness, willful naivete, or blind ambition at the price of my integrity. Perish the thought! What would ever give you such an idea? Forget it, that. Let’s continue to harp on the fact that nobody else really understand me, not the way you do, friend. Not the way you can make me feel better about myself, not the way that you have been a person to always support me, encourage me, never one to judge, never one to dissuade me from anything, never hard or harsh, cruel, or realistic, and to me that might have short-circuited some of the self-destruction.
No, it is not the only kind of rational thinking that I get from you, friend, but just the opposite. I come seeking solace – a balm for my emotional wounds. I know that you are good for it. I know you are not one to undermine this relationship with anything like truth, so I have once again, as past times, come back to you for my refreshment, my rejuvenation, my resetting of my emotional counter back to “fresh” and “happy” again, a resetting which I know you will be all too happy to provide, for I can see that you too find value in such codependency.
You feel needed, and that makes you feel valued, so regardless of the very one-way flow of energy that this vampiric bond survives on, me sucking from you, never giving, never sustaining, regardless of how little I can offer in terms of a [illegible] or even respect, I know you will continue to pursue your part just as I will continue to pursue mine.
So, friend, what do you say? Got any of the good stuff for me? Sure, it’s been a while, but I know you’re good for it. You can’t have forgotten how to make me feel better already, have you?
After all, it’s only been a minute.
Stephan Writes 