Eleven (The Magician)

Let’s live.

One day, my hair won’t be purple anymore and yours won’t be white. We wouldn’t have to constantly rebel against the narrative of the genres we belong to. You won’t be the tragedy king and I won’t be the manic queen. Maybe, one day, the only meanings to our past would be that they existed and so did we – they did not create us.

One day, we wouldn’t have to breathe in installments of pills. We wouldn’t talk about debts, medicines, legal documents and bills and the number of times we pushed through life like pre-rehearsed drills. You hung on and so did I. Let’s never stop hanging on, bestie?

Sometimes, I do wonder whether we are two sides of the same coin. Today, you joked on if I were maybe an extension of your own will or a dream you made up to cope up with everything. If you’re my dream, bestie, then I’ve never had a better dream. And I don’t think I could, even in a thousand years.

I don’t want us to go, “Yeah, same old shit, ” one day. I wonder if we would be able to look at our premature wrinkles and laugh. I wonder if our futures might be slightly better. You respect strength and I respect bravery – slightly apart but again, so similar and overlapping that it is difficult to separate them completely – just like the patterns of our fates.

You once had somewhat of a home and don’t anymore. I never had a home and have somewhat of one now. We’re both running away in trying to remove the somewhats. You’re grateful for the walls and so am I. You’re grateful for the food and so am I. Have you paused to think that others don’t hold the appreciation of simply breathing that we do? That it isn’t a privilege for them the way it is for us?

We joke about our therapists. We tough out our traumas. Neither of us are normal or sane – and we stopped pretending to be in front of each other. What’s the point in hiding the truth from your own mirror? We reflect each other and this friendship is our way of self-love. Aren’t we so generous?

You wanted to kill God once. My passwords are all about cussing God and blooming graves. Is there any white light for those too damaged like us at the end of the tunnel? Is the tunnel ever going to end?

We live in the void as if we’re the only ones there and pretend to be who we desperately wanted to be when we were young. You pretend to be unbothered, I pretend to be caring. You’re concerned and annoyed while I don’t give a fuck – but only you see that. A mirror sees everything unfiltered, doesn’t it?

You said that amongst the four horsemen of apocalypse, I’d symbolise conquest and you, war. How very fitting, bestie. I am a control freak who loses control due to being overwhelmed from the responsibilities and you’re a person meant to be for sweeter life forced to be at a struggle to even close your eyes for a second.

You’ve promised to follow me through every abyss and hell. I know I’ll hold you to it. And this is how we live life, trying to love each other through the desperation of wanting to be more human-like and normal. I tell you tales of being unable to care and you tell me tales of being unable to look away. But we look at each other and care for each other. That is acceptable and allowed. You are, perhaps, one of the only truths in my world that I haven’t tried to manipulate and control. I am, perhaps, one of the only truths in your world that you don’t need to be at your guard and war against.

You want to live so bad and I don’t care about dying. But we live together as the world tries to kill you and I try to keep myself alive. We’re always holding on to the opposite sides of the same rope. You tug and I tug but no one moves forward unless we move in the same direction.

This isn’t some heavily inspiring emotional letter, bestie. I just wanna say that if you ever choose to die ( and I know you wouldn’t ever), do not leave me to deal with the madness alone. Do not take away from me the only person who can see who I am in my entirety without going blind from betrayal and disgust and still accepts me. I’m gonna follow you to (God-forbid) even heaven if that’s what keeps us together.

I hope you win. I hope we live. I hope we get to see the future we’re rebelling for.