I remember the chaotic birth-spark of this blog more than two years ago: a bottle of wine drained in a hotel room, a quick exit, and the feeling it had all been a mistake anyway.
The first time you saw me, you decided I presented no danger to you: that is, the probability of a sexual encounter was zero, or very close to zero. This you told me later, after the idea of going to bed together had ceased to be the elephant in the room (it never happened, not even close, despite my most persistent attempts) and we parted, never to see each other again.
It is interesting to me to enumerate the remaining memories of that day. Most of them are stretched and fat and blurred by now, in the same way as looking at objects immersed in water - I can make guesses as to what they are, without ever being certain. Yet one or two are perfectly reproducible at my will.
I know we looked at the gargoyles on some of the old buildings, and speculated about what might cause someone to spend time making something so hideous. At that moment, I felt inferior to you. You seemed to be able to talk about what was in front of you with authority, a result of your superior education and intellect.
I remember the pair of us sneaking into the hotel like thieves, hugging the walls and trying not to be seen together. It was akin to something in a dark, subtitled French comedy. Merde! Les gens ne sont pas chauves!
You made the suggestion that I ought to start writing, in lieu of seeing your dark stars of eyes again, and this is what I did. You were the shiver which caused its engine to cough into life, and it has kept turning ever since.
You are struggling, though, rootless and sad and vulnerable. It falls to me, in light of a recent instant message you left, to point out that the consequences of one - just one - day in your company persist after more than two years, no matter how amateurish the results published on here. You are capable of changing lives, even as you seemingly cannot change your own.
If it's any consolation, we all suffer like this, and there's no visible end to it. When my grandmother died, the message of support was there from you, slipped under my pillow by an angel in the middle of the night. I'll never forget how you touched my despair - for a second I ceased to mourn and said thankyou to the forces which created you.
Now you too must hang on, no matter how the choir of grim voices in your mind implore you to do otherwise. The sadness which crushes you is unique to you, but a similar weight is experienced by a teeming mass of billions of sorrowful, guilty humans. There are no answers, and I can't lift the heaviness with even the best-chosen words, but at least you are not alone. If thoughts could cure, you'd wake up later with a new realisation of your own significance.
