Five years, and the story comes to its close. A new chapter opens and creates futures just as difficult for me to recognize as the past. The blue and yellow has transformed into the red and black.
Five years...that's all we've got...
As surely as I felt it, that night staring at the sky while standing at a bus stop, something had started and, because it had a beginning, it would someday have an end. It would take time to get there, and in the process I would develop new lives to lead into this open world I had now exposed myself to. Five years ago, I didn't know how things would end...only that sometime during the winter of 2012, things would.
In 2007, I believed myself better able to understand the aftermath of that summer's intensity of meaning. Really, things had just begun. A contemplation of death, a distance between me and the one I loved most, and the belief I could trick myself into hope.
In the passing years, death has become much, much more than it was when I stood on the bridge that morning, staring at the water, looking for my fate, wondering if dying would be quick or slow after I jumped. That morning, I thought I could cheat death by believing someone out there was waiting for me. I had no ability to understand how death would make eternal the distance between me and him...he who I loved more than anyone, even myself. I was incapable of realizing my beliefs stood on precious little ground whether I wanted to trick myself or not.
And now, five years later, I am not sure what I can hope for anymore. The best friend I ever had is in cold ground, his name in ugly letters on stone. I found love, then lost it, then found it again...and denied it. All the fantasies I tried to carry past their point of relevance have finalized into obscure, ambiguous imagery. The ultimate reconciliation of God has been exposed as the ultimate beautiful lie I had avoided. I feel more alone---and cheated---than I'd ever have known I could feel.
"...And all the nobody people, and all the somebody people ---
I never thought I'd need so many people."
I gave names to the seasons.
COTTONFIRE - The summer of 2007, overture to what's coming...The blinding dawn of a new world which yet remains black and dark. Battle of heroes...Imaginary worlds to sustain me while I become disenchanted by everything around me, setting itself aflame. The ending to the most important friendship of my life.
Across The Universe - From autumn of 2007 until the winter of 2008. Escape from the house I grew up in, at last. The last thread snaps, the one between me and the church that was mine...and the people. I can't see you anymore, he said. Forced shadows. A girl. I'm done with being confused. The choice, then the boy. Did I know from the start? An incredible summer, my first kiss---then, the fiercest pain I've ever felt. "It's called heartbreak," he says, his telephone voice without emotion. And I'm alone again.
P O L A R I S - Two years, perhaps where a church mission might have been. From 2009 to 2010, the kind of friend I always felt like being, the tables reverse when my first best friend in years suddenly falls in love with me, then hides it to save our friendship...which ends anyway in catastrophe. But these are the circus years. God is dead. That one perfect boy scorns me, I don't whether to smash or fuck his pretty boy face. Then, London, where Satan stops at Bethnal Green. I feel connected, like I might never be alone again. Images recur of other places, places with knights and angels, and the end of the world. And a falling boy. I can never tell if it is me or someone else.
white noise. - 2011, abismo bendito. Signals in crosshairs, deafening static the only sound that gives me any meaning anymore. Is there a name for this? Can this be named? Rumored abyss...but it is also the 'one year later' story, a hole through time. I make the terrible, terrible choice to abandon the man who loves me. I feel like I can hear everything all at once. Madness. Stateless. All reality constantly threatens to snap apart. I have snapped apart. Fragmented, trying to feel more whole when nothing feels broken, either. But there is a girl who lets me get as close to her as she dares to be close to me. We only trust each other during our final fantasies with the circus, and that lost boy, before we all try to grow up. A November morning communion. Then: betrayal, and the beginning of a curse. The last of twilight, and now a shadow falls.
Now, 2012. It's one cold, winter day. But to see him again for the first time in nearly five years gives me a strange sensation in an older part of my heart...it's a warm, good feeling. But how could I know it would be the last. There are last rites in bat country. Dark side...evil seems to win, every friendship goes fragile, then breaks. War of the worlds. I play with oblivion. Then...he falls. There is no immaculate collapse - just brutality and violence. The tragedy is so perfect, I don't know how I didn't see it coming - it was all there from the overture. But I didn't see it. Fear and regret, my constant companions now that the Black Parade is dead. Nightfall is clearing to reveal a blood red wasteland. I have lost almost everything, and I have almost nothing left to give. And it's over, all over.
But now bells begin to sound.
