I went to the actual real life beach for the second time this year, and it was the first time since maybe November that it was enjoyable. I somehow seem to forget every winter how healing it is just being on the sand, in the warmth of the sun, watching the wildlife swirl all around me.

Five years at the Outer Banks, and I am still dazzled and mesmerized by her glory.

I found a bench halfway up the side of an avalanched dune, next to a buried staircase. In the winter, the brutal surf and shifting sands disappear a great deal of the staircases that run up to the expansive, multi-million dollar homes. Every year, they are excavated and repaired.

I am forever in awe of it- how hard we have to fight nature to allow us a space to exist. How quickly she reclaims it all for herself.

I fell backwards into meditation and asked if I could speak to my oldest friend, who honestly deserves a better name than that, but it is the truest thing about us without making it too complicated. I look at his raptor shaded eyes and a hurricane of memories I’m hardly allowed to brush my fingers against whirls through my entire core.

“We can always talk,” he said curtly, appearing on the bench next to me.

Meditation is like having an amphibian-like second eyelid that slides down over your eyes. He is there, he is not there. I see him clearly, I do not see him at all. While we talk, my head turns towards him. I make faces as I react to what he’s saying. I lace my fingers together to help me remember what it’s like when someone grasps my hand.

Feeling something in your brain but not physically feeling it on your skin can be a little disruptive, so it helps your brain to stop shouting when you play along a bit. Over seventeen years into this, so I definitely know how to play along.

“I know we can always talk,” I said, “but I worry about wasting your time, so-“

“You are never wasting my time.”

I cut my eyes to him, squinting at his profile. “Why does it always seem like you’re… mad at me, or like… there’s this tension between us?”

He sighed through his nose. “I mean, do we have to have this conversation every single time we talk, or…?”

“Okay do not use your Rabbi voice at me, please.”

His mouth pulled to one corner. “Stop talking to me like you’re asking for a lecture, then.”

“Okay,” I said softly, turning my whole body towards him, leaning my cheek against my hand. His real name poured out of my mouth like water, so sacred to me I so rarely even speak it out loud. It feels too precious to hit this poisoned air.

He turned towards me, his face softer now. “It’s just… you’re one of the only people I don’t have to be that person with.” He sighed, rolling his eyes, staring out at the sea. “I just… I don’t want to be that person anymore. I hate him.”

I laughed spontaneously, surprised, then he caught my eye and I immediately fell silent.

“Imagine the disappointment in meeting me,” he said softly, his eyes back on the horizon. “All this hype, all this legend, all this parable, all this fame. And…” He gestured to himself, both hands waving up and down his entire silhouette. “It’s just this. Just some fucking guy. There’s no story. There’s no magic.”

His eyes went dark and his mouth pulled again. “And my entire timeline is bloodshed and destruction. Violation. Ruination. Because of me?” He turned his chin up to look at the sky. “What an embarrassment. All this drama, all this madness, and…” His hands waved up and down his frame once again. “This is what you get. Someone whose greatest gift was his big mouth gets this incredibly important timeline he doesn’t deserve. …it’s hilarious. It’s pathetic.”

“But you know what you do matter, right?” I said gently, leaning towards him as if my sheer presence could compel him. “I mean, even if the story is all bullshit, it matters. It always has… it still does. Your words are pure grace. You helped save my life.”

He glanced softly at me, and sighed. “I mean. Yes. I guess. It’s just… it’s exhausting, you know? But I mean also, it’s so funny to everyone here. That gets very tiring to carry for eternity, believe me. Being graceful amongst the constant jokes. Being a ‘good sport’ when everyone is always trying to drag you down.”

“Ha ha,” he sneered in a mocking tone. “‘Oh, give us your ~sage~ advice! What would you do?'”

His mouth curled into a near snarl. “And yet, I am also always held to a different standard. ‘Oh, no! Not you! I am just surprised that you would do that.'” He feigned horror and disdain, on the verge of operatic with its drama, then waved his hands as if dusting off an invisible shelf.

Turning his helpless palms towards me, eyes violent with despair, he whispered, “I’m a joke who is still expected to live up to the punchline.”

His golden tinged eyes flicked like searchlights across my face. “And then there’s someone like you, someone who has done so much, so.much. And almost no one knows. You’d be so much more arrogant than you already are if you knew how much you’ve really played a hand in, and the kind of credit you deserve.”

His mouth curled up merrily at my squinting side-eye, my twisted lips. “Even over Here, almost no one has any idea how much you’ve been a part of.” His face was genuinely empathetic. “That’s your joke, your punishment. The invisible lightning rod.”

Now I took my own turn scouring his features for answers. “But okay, there is tension between us though,” I said, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice. “And I’m sorry, I can’t just act like I don’t feel it when it hangs around us like this heavy cloud. I don’t know how I-“

“I’m embarrassed,” he interrupted. “It shouldn’t be like this. This is…” he sighed, and his eyes went out past the horizon. “It’s so inappropriate. If ‘Alex’ exposed his own failures through your lifetime, so have I.”

His gaze flicked to me briefly, then went back out to the waves. “Just the idea that you- You, Hermie, your entire self- set this whole thing up to prove Alex hadn’t changed…? And then I essentially ‘swoop in’ to save you only to find out that this had played out exactly as you planned?”

He shook his head a little, his mouth trying not to curl at the edges. “I… am never not surprised at what you’ll do to prove a point. But boy, did you. You… exposed him entirely.”

He turned towards me, squeezing my fingers again. “But you exposed me as well. I had a chance to really help you, to be a kind guardian, someone you could rely on, someone to help you grow, and I couldn’t even do that. I let Alex get under my skin, and I became needy and immoral under your innocent, purely loving gaze. It showed me for the weak fraud I’ve always been.”

He winced so hard it was almost a shudder. “And even now, lately, with some of the things I’ve done, I am just… an embarrassment. A failure. A coward.”

I tipped my head to one side. “What things are…”

His eyes became deeply pained, grazing against terrified. “Oh, please don’t make me say it. You know exactly what I’m talking about.” His entire body cringed. “You deserve better than that.”

“So… who am I to you now?” I asked softly, searching his face. “Like, right now? What are we?”

He immediately broke my gaze, looking all the way to the end of the beach, now just a mess of dark mahogany curls in my vision. “Oh. Well. I mean… it’s…”

“Come on. Why won’t you talk to me about this? I can feel this energy between us, and I understand that I’m not supposed to know about it. But I do. And it bothers me. It physically hurts me. How do you think it makes me feel that you’re you and we have such a weird vibe?”

“Some fucking guy.”

“Shut up,” I snapped dismissively, but without malice. “Tell me what this is. Who am I to you now? Before I came here this last time, what was our situation?”

He took a deep, slow breath, pulling his hand from mine to rub both of his palms together. “Well… to be honest, I haven’t talked to you in awhile. No matter what the reality is, I have a consuming job here, and it doesn’t leave me a lot of time for anything else. I’m forever trying to repair the damage that… ‘I’ did.” His smile was terribly sad.

“And when you’re involved with Alex, I honestly can’t stand you, so it’s better to stay away. So I… didn’t know what was going on for too long.” He cringed again. “Until honestly… you were already dead. Do you realize that? In 2010, you didn’t even exist anymore. Everything about you was vacuumed entirely clean.”

My mouth twisted as if it was forming its own question mark. “Okay okay, but why was this such A Situation with Alex this time? Have he and I never… been together before?”

His eyebrow lifted into a sharp angle, and a small smirk breezed briefly across his mouth. “Oh, you two are always involved in some sort of tryst. How did you phrase it? ‘Fighting or fucking?'” Now both eyebrows went up for a moment, but his mouth stayed a thin line. “That’s extremely accurate. You two are…”

His face turned back to the end of the beach, my vision all rich dark waves of hair. “It just never ends. You can never stay away from each other, no matter what happens. To know you’d let this happen to you, essentially take away this huge portion of this current life through trauma and abuse, and you’re angry that I interfered?” He laughed bitterly.

“Well,” I said softly, “not to mention Jim, who she seems totally fine with sacrificing.”

He turned his face back to me, his eyes soft and shimmering golden light again. “Ah, well. I think you may end up surprising yourself when it comes to Jim. In fact, I think you will end up surprising a lot of people.”

“Maybe even you?”

His eyes slowly lingered on my features, one corner of his mouth gently tugging to the edge of his jaw as if caught by a fish hook. “Maybe even me,” he murmured. “But to be honest… I’ve given up on thinking you will ever choose me. That’s not what we have. It’s… not something that any one of the three of us is allowed. We are all so in love, we all will never truly be in love.” He shrugged a little, deflated.

“But this time. Why were you so angry this time?”

“This time?” This time his laughter was genuine, his face chagrined. “Oh, my love, I am this angry every time. And so are you. And so is he. You’d think we’d be over it by this point- this tug of war, this constant bickering, this ferocious need to be together, but… we still aren’t.” He shrugged. “We never will be. It’s tedious. The entire Universe is sick of us.”

It’s too much to know. This is the one thing I wish I hadn’t learned. Knowing all of this, trying to process it for the last fifteen years or so has fucked up too much of my heart. This is disgusting foolishness. I hate this.

Ignorance is bliss. Spiritual work can be its own trauma. Knowledge can be violence.

I am alone in ways lately that terrifies me. I am tired of being so bizarre. Please… help me. This is sick, and extreme, and pathetic. I am so embarrassed. I am so proud. I am so disgusted. I am so smug. I am so repellent.

I don’t want to exist like this anymore.