Human

You were right.
I should have heeded your wisdom... but, in my fantasy, I thought it could be otherwise. I hoped... perhaps in vain. Perhaps despite my cycnical nature, I'm a deep romantic about human nature and humans.

But you're right: students can't be real friends ... no matter how different or mature they seem to be. They simply cannot be ... not at this age. The chasm is too wide and deep; the expectations will always never be met, and they will take more than they can give. And yet these expectations seem so fundamental to me. It is not their fault - it's nobody's but my own, no one's delusion but mine.

Then again, even grown-ups don't meet them. The rest of humanity is, as you've said, frail and inconstant. It probably is just me. I was different as a child; I still am. There was a time that I wanted so much to adapt, to be 'normal.' But I didn't quite succeed because I could never think like 'everyone else'. And in my acceptace I began to see: most people are too absorbed by their own needs and pain to extend any empathy. I, on the other hand, seek unnecessary pain by empathising... Most people are just oblivious, and clueless, to others' needs and they are surprised that they could actually hurt someone with their inaction or indecision. And just when we think we know the person beside, s/he is perhaps the most unknowable and unknown.

I have, as you've advised, used this time to look within to see what's important in my life. Nothing's changed - the same things I valued then, I still do. But these events, these thoughts, these rationalisations - they tell me to abandon my naivety and closet hope in people regardless of their age.

And so we all move on. Not by choice but by reason. Ironically... We all move on as much as we talk about eternity and the 'foreverness' of love and friendship. And I've come to realise that eternity is found only in nostalgia - nostalgia is always a singular experience. That phase is over, and possibly the people in it. I think I have to go; I have to go. I am already away.

I'm tired... of how life plays games with me. I never really wanted all this - somehow people believe that I care; something tells them that I have, as you've said, a great capacity for love and friendship despite my cold and firm demeanour. And perhaps I do care about those that come to me. I've never turned away anyone who needed an ear or wanted to be loved. But I'm tired... because it rarely comes back around. I'm tired of trying, hoping, anticipating. It's time I stopped caring...

I should have heeded. Maybe it's time I did. The problem therein is just one letter, 'I' - I hope for the impossible. Hope now ends. There will only be silence. There is, as you've written, nothing to do: There is only grief and acceptance.

Yes, I am not always that strong. I am human too...
Yes, I am dead and it's not just a feeling.