Tyler and I slowly drifted and he set his sights on his next expedition. I was living in the middle of an incestuous adult summer camp. Everyone was hooking up with everyone. Foolish me for thinking otherwise.
I didn't want to date Tyler. Let me make that perfectly clear. I just wanted to hang out, hike mountains, listen to Mac Miller and only make out with each other.
Is that too much to ask for?
I wasn't hurt. Obviously not. That's why I considered myself to be the perfect hook-up. I was completely emotionally unavailable, pinning for an adorable and possibly non-existent ghost. But it is annoying to finally have a taste of that flame inside me. Once the fire ignited, it was hard to put it out.
So we went our separate ways and each discovered the beauty in Jasper independent from each other.
Until one night where our paths would cross again.
I will find Tyler in the cusp of his psychedelic trip crying about his father. He will tell me that he hates his dad but still guard his fathers' watch on his left-hand wrist as his most prized possession.
Through sobs, he will ask me, “Are you going to forget about me?”
The psychedelics revealed what I already knew to be his greatest fear; being left behind.
I will smile and giggle and ask if he knows who he is talking to. I incriminatingly write every detail of my life. He was my first after Daniel. He was the first to teach me that my heart could still have fun. And so, he has his own special little corner in my heart. We will reconnect and he will tell me he ruins every bond he's ever had. He will tell me that he runs like the wind at the sight of any sign of intimacy.
That's the thing about liking people with pain in their hearts. Not all of them carry it well.
This time we will be closer. We will be just as bold and reckless in our adventures. But he will also be more vulnerable. He will slowly dismantle the wall he had spent his whole life building.
He will call me out. He will tell me that my game of evading people’s questions is my own defense against real connection. He will tell me I am an outlier for how I view the world and I need to understand that just because I don't abide by societal conventions does not mean they do not exist. He will tell me that I wander in and out of peoples lives like a ghost because I'm scared to make a real connection. He’ll say I’m scared that they will die on me. He will intuitively know things about my soul that I don't even admit to myself. This whole time I thought I was the only one who was capable of critically analyzing him. Meanwhile he's been studying me like a book the whole time and I hadn't the slightest clue.
He would walk me to my room and joke about us borrowing his friend's tattoo gun to mark ourselves with a symbol of our friendship. Thankfully, I had already learned my lesson about premature matching friendship tattoos.
He will be both the eccentric, energetic jokester as well as the moody, daddy issued little boy. He will constantly be torn between both parts of himself.
I will struggle to know which one will win the fight. It's like I know he can be better but he isn't proving that to me. I want to believe in the version of himself that he can be but maybe he just isn't ready.
And I wasn't in a position to force it at that time.
To be continued....
Always with love,
Audacious Fool