He Who Drifted Away
He was notorious for his lack of motivation and unwillingness to push forward through daunting tasks. He never really cared about the world around him, in his mind it was all futile to even attempt to be positive as there was no fixing the state that he was in; a state of solidarity that irked them through their entire upbringing that never faded. No one in his family ever saw him, saw the work he put in to seek validation, the things he was truly interested in or the way he felt. Instead they would dismiss him and try to fill the void they created from absence with materialistic objects, drowning him in items he would never need nor want. But no one saw this part of him and he had no desire to share these things with others, if he did he might have been pushed further into the deep end of society.
After exhausting all avenues that he could think of to make his life better he opted to go with the only other option he had readily available to him which was to give up. Perhaps not the greatest choice in hindsight but what else was he going to do in a life that gave up on him? After giving up his life fell further into disarray but what was he losing? A life that was already dismissing him that didn’t care about his achievements or aspirations, a life that watched him drown and didn’t blink an eye? While he thought everything was over someone noticed him drowning, they wanted to know what pushed him off into the deep end but he was not going to budge, he spent too long keeping it all to himself to just shatter. Finally they pushed too far, and he did shatter but not in a way that leaked out the things he hid but the feelings he never felt, the feelings he avoided for so long.
Eventually he felt as if he was on his last breath with a magnificent weight pushing down on him keeping him stuck in his head unable to break free into the real waters that were slowly engulfing him to the point he could no longer breathe. Caving in, he decides to coincide with someone who he could always rely on in a time of need. He admitted things he never admitted to any other, things he scuffed down inside of him and covered up to avoid the damage that may ensue. To his dismay they understood something about himself that he never deemed important or worthy to talk about. In fact his confessee sees his detachment to these issues that he pushed away not giving another thought and saw them as vital components to what brought him to his current state as a person. They saw the fights, the concurring, the waves and whirlpools that no one else, even himself saw. They told him that he didn’t need to keep this all encapsulated inside himself, that there would always be people who would be able to get at least a drop of what he was going through and people who would care if he swam deep enough. Most importantly he told him to keep on swimming. He took it all at face value and came to the realisation that if he could get through the biggest wave that could ever stand before him, the one that he created, there was no wave or obstacle that could prevent him from reaching a state of self actualization, a state of freedom.
He is someone I could never forget, someone who rose above everything that tried to stop him, someone who rose above himself. I wish I could let him know that everything would be ok, let him know that all the things he was doing was going to surmount to something, something he could never believe. Alas I will never be able to as we have drifted apart a distance so great that I will never be able to see him, at least not in the same light I once did nor in a short enough journey to be able to remember all the great things he did. If I do ever see him again though hopefully it won’t be for too long, I know it may sound sadistic in a way but I don’t know if I could live where he lived without falling apart into a multitude of pieces and having to pick it all back up. I know I will drift back towards him at least some amount, we always drift in that direction at some point but gaining back the control of your raft sooner or later is important to keeping ourselves in one piece. Despite being practically light years apart I can’t help but see the parts in him that reflect back on to me, the things that never changed between us. Although those things would never change in him I suppose, he isn’t the one who changed after all, he is just someone during one period of time.
Despite him never seeing things he went through as important, I now see them as some of the most important things in his life, at least they are the things that gave me a new friend who understood and related to what we went through. Additionally it gave me the strength to keep going, we went through so much that I doubt there is nothing I wouldn’t be able to do or face, I already did so many things he never thought of ever doing. Although there are many things that we disagree on, we both saw someone who needed help, he thought it could never be done but I now see that it was possible. I really should thank that person that grounded me, the person who listened as I was drowning and didn’t push me to say more than I needed to in the moments that I spoke to him. If it wasn’t for him we wouldn’t have drifted apart.