Good Form:

It's time to be blunt.

I'm nineteen years old, true, and I'm not really sure where my life is headed, and not so long ago I had a friend whom I loved very much.

Almost everything I am today is invented.

But it's not a game. It's a form. Right here, now, as I invent myself, I'm thinking of all I want to tell you about why I loved her the way I did. For instance, I want to tell you this: she was everything I wanted to have in life and everything I hoped to become. There is nothing I would not have done for her. I needed her like she needed God. When we were together, I felt complete and cared for as I have at no other time in my life. She was never really mine, but I still felt that she was obligated to me through some unspoken degree of providence and that fate would drive us together. Destiny pulled a trick on me however in a situation I could have never foreseen and drove us apart. But I will not let him win! I tried and will forever continue to attempt to conquer fate. Her leaving me was partially my fault, you see, and for that I will never forgive myself. I remember the things I said after what I viewed as her betrayal, terrible things to tell anyone let alone the one you claim to love, and these things are guilt enough for me to be filled with sorrow at my own disloyalty. I remember that I loved her; I just don't remember exactly why. I blamed her. And wrongly so, because I myself was capable of even greater betrayal.

But listen. Even that story is made up.

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why feeling-truth is truer sometimes than happening truth.

Here is the happening-truth. I once had a friend. She dated and had sex with a boy two weeks after meeting him. There were many points she would not reveal to me, but I never quit trying to understand. It was a simple, factual occurrence which honestly, even if she had revealed all to me, I never would have understood because I did not believe myself capable of understanding and honestly did not want to. And now, more than eight months later, I still cannot move forward and I'm left with hate for the one person I once loved the most and filled with despair at having lost her completely.

Here is the feeling-truth. She was a perfect, innocent angel whom I loved with all my heart and never would have thought capable of any wrongdoing. After two years of being together (in spirit) as I saw it, I decided to on Valentine's evening reveal to her all that had been penned inside me so very long. How little could I have imagined that that very evening my world and entire reality would be flipped upside down. Instead of the perfect night I'd envisioned, it was awkward. She had been acting different for a while and I knew it but all I could think was that she was distant this evening because she knew how I felt and would never care for me as I did for her. Again I could not have been more wrong. I was never even a thought on her mind. That same night that was to have been the start of the rest of our lives together (a fairy-tale romance with a Disney happily ever after ending), she told me about a series of events she had just been through. No, not even that, just one surprising horror that stabbed me through the heart and broke any groundings I had on reality. My angel had secretly dated a Mexican behind my back, as I perceived it, and after only two weeks of being together, she let him fuck her. He'd wanted it for a while. Even that night, she says she said no... but what could have been more simple than just leaving the bastard and going home? He went to the community college and didn't even live in our town. After the sex, they talked for about twenty minutes. I don't know what about. He then asked her to write an English paper for his class the next day. When she wouldn't but offered to help, I think he still insisted that she write it. At this point she left the house, crying in her Camaro to a friend via phone that clearly she cared for more than me. This friend lives in another town as well. She never realized that the one person who cared for her the most, the one person that would have always been there for her and seen her through any situation had she only sought his advice, was right beside her the entire time. Many of these events are puzzle pieces thrust into a collage which just does not fit. Like I said, she never fully opened up to me. My angel died to me that Valentine's day and along with her demise came a void in my heart which can never again be filled.

What happening truth can do, I guess, is make things simple.

I can look at things at face value. I can delve no deeper into fact and in doing so find happiness. Unfortunately, this is not how I have chosen to or am capable of living my life. I choose sorrow and grief over contentment. I lounge in the past and don't move forward. The feeling-truth is more real to me than life's tragic but factual events. I cannot believe the cruelty and horror of the world. I fill myself with activities just so that I might occupy time and move myself as rapidly toward death as possible. For I no longer find any real happiness with existence, no matter how much I feign well-being. She abandoned me and the truth is that which I cannot face. I long to find a way to see her as the same innocent and perfect creature that I did before, but this is a truth which neither she, myself, or God seem willing to give me. All my happiness, dreams, and goals for the future are gone. I had filled my mind with thoughts only of her and she was to be my sole purpose in life. With that purpose gone, I can now only hope that some unseen force will thrust itself into my life and give me a new one. For now, however, I am surrounded only by gloom. It would take more than a miracle to save us.

"Severin, tell the truth," people may say, "was your friend a hypocritical whore?" And I can say, honestly, "Of course!"

Or I can give the feeling-truth, which I so desire to have, and say, honestly, "No."

(Sorry this had nothing to do with Vietnam Mr. P., but I went through my own war, and much like the veterans have stilled not fully emerged from it)