453. The Last Time

You are here talking to me, yet you seem to be somewhere else. Where this other place is, I do not know. But I can see in your eyes and hear in your voice that you are not with me, and this fills me with an overwhelming despair. Your absence has created a chasm between us, one that I cannot bridge alone. Even with all of my attention focused on you, there is nothing I can do that will bring you closer to me.

You want our conversation to end so that you can complete your escape. You never say this, but it is plainly obvious in the way you are speaking. You have no interest in bridging anything between us. You are more than happy to remain an other, alone in your separate world, apart from me and mine.

It is my desire to bring us together into one single world that is the source of my pain. If I were powerful, I would let it go and dismiss my despair along with it. If I were powerful, I would transform this conversation into a pleasant experience for both of us and send you on your way. If I were powerful, I would allow all of this to pass, just like I do for the countless trivial things that happen to me.

But I am not powerful, not right now. The despair I feel is too great. To keep this devastating feeling from exploding in your direction, I have to do everything I can to appease it. My despair is my master, and everything I say to you is a response to its commands. It is this that makes our conversation more difficult than it might have been.

I cannot allow you to go. I cannot allow you to abandon me. I cannot allow this because then my despair will grow without limit and it will consume me. I want to drag you down with me. I want you to experience this pain. I want you to suffer just as much as I am suffering. To burn together would be infinitely better than to burn alone.