The Visitor

May 17, 2009.

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Yeah, I skipped May 16. It was the day after I got closure, and I felt good for most of the day. Still thinking about you, but feeling good about where things with us left off. Nothing felt unexplained or left-hanging anymore.

Today was much the same. Falling deeper into my new routine of waking up, working out, eating something, and working until early evening, then retiring to my end of the trailer to entertain myself and ease my restless mind. I'm doing pretty well, though there are still times that I just get down about the whole thing. It's not that I wish we could just get back together anymore. I realize why we can't, and if you called me in a moment of weakness to try and get back to the way we were, I wouldn't let you. You need to do this for yourself. You need to value yourself enough to keep promises you make to yourself. That's the only way you'll beat this thing.

No, I just miss you now. That's all.

Even though I've unsubscribed to you on YouTube, I find myself visiting your profile quite often to see what new videos you've favorited or made. It just gives me a glimpse of how you're doing. Like I said, I can't just turn off the care I have for you.

Watching your latest video (the one about Dane Cook) I've begun to understand something: people like you because you're genuine, but still concerned enough about what people think about you to be entertaining. That allows people to feel as though they have a connection with you... well, that coupled with your uncanny ability to take the words that people wished they had on the tip of their tongues and parade them in such a manner that can't help but elicit a grin. You speak to that part in us all that wishes to escape from reality for just a little while... but that's because you inhabit the place we would escape to. You don't inhabit the same reality that the rest of us do, and it's both beautiful and tragic at the same time. It's beautiful because you are almost a mirage, an ethereal symbol for what we all wish we could be more like. It's tragic because, to you, everyone else is the same thing: a symbol for what you wish you could be more like. Grounded. Complete. Rational. Resilient.

In a campy sense, your videos are top notch. To someone who doesn't know you very well, the things you talk about and the way you talk about them are absolutely fantastic. To someone who knows you inside and out, your videos elicit a strange mix of admiration and pity. Part of me wishes you would find a way to join the rest of us in reality, so that we could share with you all we know, and so that you would no longer be plagued by the "beast" that shares your world with you. Another part of me wants you to stay untouched, unfettered by the constraining bonds of a rational existence, so that the world might continue to hang on every word of the visitor from our fantasies.

It almost makes me want to start making videos, because I am your polar opposite. Where you're a feeler, I'm a thinker. Where you're an appreciator, I'm a critic. Where someone can read your work and be astounded at the mental images you paint with such unorthodox phrasings, they can read mine and be awed at just how far an idea can be taken. Where you're concerned with what makes you laugh, cry, or get angry, I'm concerned with why.

I think those reasons are why we complemented each other so well for so long. It also might be why we're both special. Maybe we were meant to balance one another out. Maybe our destinies lie with each other... if not romantically, then maybe philosophically.

I don't know. I just know I miss you terribly. I miss watching your incredibly classy videos and thinking "yeah, she's awesome, but she's with me, so too bad." I took pride in being yours. Now I can only take pride in having been yours at one time. Kicking and screaming, I know I'm moving ever closer to being your friend once again. The kicking and screaming is simply because I miss my "best" friend.