Curse of the prophet

A story about a breakup and the inevitability of the past.

Many times in my life I have seen things, doubted myself so that I did not act on my sight, and had those things be real. Many times I have seen things, trusted my instincts and intuition - but then fought against my knowledge only to have it end up the way I expected.

Sometimes - I see something and from my limited perspective I judge it good. I feel a thrill, having given permission, that I have allowed that thing to be.

It’s silly of course. An ego’s way of coping.

All the stories say it. The path of the seer, the prophet, the truth-seeker is a hard one. The visions we are given are not changeable visions. They are inevitabilities. In other ways I can be protagonist.

But the seer cannot change what he has seen.

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People are not individual people, they are characters, archetypes, ranges of person-ness. Sit in a public space and you will see them. There is the man-child with his light step and smile, and charisma. There is sun woman with her loud voice and loud body - booming herself into the world. Here is weary man, probably a professor with his straggly beard and jaded steps. There is fire hair, with her self awareness and knowledge of her own beauty. There is small man in his constant attempts to fit in and be recognized, and sometimes with him modern gamer, large in body, crude of mouth - but inevitably funny. There is the shadow girl.

You know them. Your set will be a little different. Mine wear the names of the first people I knew of their kind, tempered by the ones who’ve worn it after. When you get to know them they sometimes surprise. This fire hair isn’t stuck up at all. This weary man teaches writing not economics - but you can tell a lot by the silhouette - you can see their pattern in the world.

Sometimes you find yourself in the waves of characters. This one younger, this one older - you see in them the range that you represent. You give to the younger some of what you wished you had, and watch him take it and fly further than you ever could have.

That is how I see the world. Sometimes I tell people and they get angry. I’m comfortable with the word stereotype in a way many are not. I’m comfortable with the idea of inevitabilities in a way others must fight them. The pattern of people is for me a tool - a way of interacting easily with people I’ve just met, because we are actually just continuing our conversation.

And when I pick it up with shadow girl she always knows just where we are.

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I say I am comfortable with inevitabilities. I lied just then. I am more comfortable with inevitabilities than most. I am comfortable with the idea of inevitabilities. I am a thread in a pattern and the beauty is not in my choosing where to go, but rather where I end up. Stray from my place and I will screw up the tapestry.

But sometimes in my limited perspective I cannot simply trust the weaver to take me where she will. Instead I fight with tooth and nail for my desire.

It was that way with shadow girl this time around. We fell into our usual pattern she and I. Some chance will bring us together. She will watch me but do nothing, and I will perceive interest all the same. I will act and she will respond with passion that will always surprise me for someone so small. We will fall in love.

But always in that love we will be framed by our inevitable ending. Maybe I’m moving. Maybe she’s going away. Maybe she’s more than I can handle. Maybe I am for her. Every moment with her is tinged by the smallest note of farewell.

Despite this we will always plan she and I. How many children and what will be their names? Who will visit who this summer, and what will we do? What will we build tomorrow? How will we eat tonight? We are tied by the endless possibilities.

I do not know how much of this is true to other characters. Other women and I have gone different ways, only shadow girl does this.

We pick up the same games. We will always be intrigued together by the eroticism of noses. We will always be intrigued by one another’s fire. She is called shadow girl because she knows she has a shadow. It will have shaped her somehow and she is made bright by the experience. She will be small and dark haired. She will be surprisingly firm. She will be childlike and occasionally childish. They will be young writers but old poets. There will be dancing.

It is not that she is the only woman I am attracted to, but our conversation has long since passed to intimacy. Courtship feels silly and is always swift. She is not so common as featherbrain or pushy girl - but there’s usually at least one. She is mine.

Until she ceases to be mine.

---

Yet this question weighs on me and I have no answers. Lady take from me my free will and let me be an instrument of yours. Your answers are always so much greater than anything I can imagine. I trust you.

That was my prayer at the beginning of this year. She answered as she always does with a lesson. I answered, as I often do, with resistance. S was everything I could have asked for. This manifestation intrigued me in her physical strength, her emotional intelligence - her being.
And what were the signs? She looked a scarily lot like B, that gave her two months. I would meet her parents and she would never meet mine. I would give everything in plans.

We spoke of endings early on. Another sign. She'd ended many times before. A third arrow a seer’s eyes can follow. Our end was written in her soul, and I saw it hanging there like dust motes in the sun. Falling forever to gravity’s pull. There was so much fire and between us not the age yet to hold it.  

But I could not accept that. On the equinox I asked spring to intercede. Length in a relationship I reasoned comes with light equal to darkness. With balance. Perhaps if I bargained with balance the pattern could be broken.

Or perhaps if one thing was different the pattern would alter. What if we passed that mark? What if I brought her home? What if I stepped lightly and attentively? What if there were nothing ostensibly wrong?

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In the end it was a feeling. Maybe I messed up a little but she wouldn't point to it. Instead it was a need that she felt and trusted. The sound of a dustmote touching the ground. And I - I am left here with so many answers and not enough questions. I am left finding my capacity to hold grief is greater, but it is no less grief. I am left having to trust her. Trust the pattern, trust that I am being woven where I must.

Each time it ends I ask. After E, I asked for someone my own age. After J I asked for someone physical, someone here. After B, I asked for time. After J I asked for honesty. After A, I asked for maturity. As I sought out from G I asked for passion.

After S I ask for trust. Trust that I am who I say I am. -but I think it’s time for me to take a break for a while. Before I can demand trust elsewhere I must learn it myself. Trust that all things are as they must be.

All things must end.