Marvelous Persona: An Open Letter to One of God's Own Prototypes

We met many years ago, when I was seventeen.

I wandered into the coffee house early that day; I even remember what I wore, a too-small black t-shirt and jeans that were way too frayed. I had stapled some of the holes shut. You asked if I wanted to spend the day together. We spent the morning at your parents’ mansion on a back country road. I remember that your living room was the size of my entire house. I brought you to mine, later, and we laid on my bed, tossing wads of paper into a trashcan, talking about nothing, hating summer.

We got drunk later, on my parents’ watered-down SoCo, and you spent the night.

I told my friends about it the next day, wearing the same outfit, laughing at how ridiculous you were. We saw each other now and again, frequenting the same coffee shop, walking the two blocks to the train tracks and drinking cheap vodka on the trestle. You had a terrible taste in music, and I pretended not to care. I fell a little in love with the idea of you, for a minute. No matter what anyone else said.

A year later, we met again at that dilapidated white house on Pine Street, with the wheelchair on the porch and the bunk beds in the living room. You were much different; baggy sweaters, corduroy pants, homemade tattoos. Everyone came to this place to make art, to drink, to pretend we were something more than faded and singed products of a town like ours. You took me places in your shitty red car; we visited farmhouses far out of town, I sat in the passenger seat and you sold low-quality weed.

We built a fort in the forest behind your house, and you’d tell me about Jim Morrison. On nights I wanted to escape my life, I came to your mansion, and we’d hide out in your basement room. We watch that Oliver Stone film over and over, and we snuck cigarettes in the cavernous garage. There was a dog that lived there, a Dachshund, and she never left, it seemed. Her fur was tinged with grey from the ash. I slept in your warm, soft, basement room, falling asleep to the sounds of sitars and smell of marijuana smoke.

We drove out to a new subdivision on the Rez, far into the fields. Parked at the cul-de-sac, and stared at the night sky, filaments of smoke trailing up and out my windows. You mostly talked, and I mostly listened. In those days, you had so much to say about everything.

You were an alien to this town, this planet, the entire universe. Transcendent.

I did a lot of strange things with you. Ended up in a lot of sketchy basement apartments, country houses, dark alleys, but they were full of bright people. You were always moving forward, always laughing, always looking to find the best way to search for answers about the universe. You moved into an apartment above the bar once, and it was a lovely place, but you were evicted eventually. I loved visiting, and having you cook me rice with cheese, play me the Black Angels, tell me about Maranatha Buddhism, crystals, the blues, mermaids.

You were my truest friend, for a long while.

Last winter I bought you a drink at Rubbles on your birthday, and we wandered off downtown, through the park, into the woods. We ended up at the overlook, above a waste field, bright with a full moon above us. We sat for hours and pounded malt liquor.  I never knew where I was going to end up with you.

You’d never left the town, but I think that maybe that’s alright. You live so simply, so purely, you are the most honest person I know, and other times, the trickiest. People tell me to stay away from you, that you are bad news, but I know you from long ago. I know you never do wrong out of disrespect for others: you are just trying to survive, and the world has dealt you a shit hand.  You’ve known more pain than anyone I’ve ever met, but you still look at the world through a kaleidoscope lens, colors shimmering, hope on the horizon.

You ran away to California last summer. You hitchhiked, relying on the good of strangers to carry you across the farmland, forests, mountains, through the country, to the sea. Your journey was fraught with perils: meth-heads, thieves, hunger, and cold. But you made it to the top of Mt. Shasta, and you learned from the people at its feet that we are one with the earth, forever. You told me all of this over Soft Parades at our favorite bar, a couple months ago, when you returned. Your hair had grown long, and you were thin and full of life. You shook your hair out of your eyes and waved your arms around, relaying your tales of places I’ve never seen. I felt seventeen again, falling in love with you for a moment.

We spent another night together, exploring around town like we used to, but I couldn’t take you home, so you had nowhere to stay. Finally, I brought you to the mansion, where you’d met so much pain the last few years. I hated dropping you into the fray, but I had nowhere else to take you. I couldn’t let you freeze. I wanted to cry. But you held me tight, thanking me, saying goodbye. I wish I had taken you with me, some days.

I don’t know where you are now. But I miss you. I love you more than you will ever realize. You are one of the most strange, beautiful people I’ve ever known, and I hope you’re somewhere, shining.

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You used to think this would be temporary. You felt a gaping, raw hole, hewn by something unthinkable, so much so that you’re not even really sure what that was. Maybe you’ve seen a piece of it in your dreams, in your nightmares, right before you wake up, in your peripheral vision. It cut a part of your heart away, and you can feel it years later, when the scarred, vital organ skips a beat and jumps up into your throat. No one could find the reason for this for the longest time, but you didn’t tell them you’ve always been searching, ever since you were small.

You don’t know what it’s like to feel fulfilled. Everything bores you, and to be honest, it always has. You’re always looking for a better scene, a story that’s more interesting, other voices, other rooms. Anywhere else seems better, until you get there. People don’t hold your interest for very long, unless you’re under the illusion that they’re bringing back something you’ve lost.

When you discovered vodka, you thought it might make you put down sharp objects to help you feel something, and for a while, it worked. Every night was a race to the third or fourth drink, and one night, to fifteen. You thought that maybe you could sterilize the raw, pink lacerations that covered the inside of your mind with something you could pour down your throat, but eventually, it just made it worse. 

When substances didn’t work, you turned to Love instead. You did your best to make it happen, smiling with teeth that were still white, running a hand through your hair, laughing that things that were never really funny, setting the stage upon which they’d fall for you, and they did, almost every time. They tried to give you everything, but they didn’t know about this.

Your pieces were spliced from an outline, haphazardly glued back together to form who you are now, a strange amalgam of worn, stained fragments that would have looked normal had their colors not faded, and placed in the correct positions. The picture looks complete, but something is missing, and you’ll never be sure what.

So you weren’t looking for anything one person could offer. This isn’t interested in kind words, passionate embraces; it wants bits and pieces of other people, and these are the things you see in your dreams. You want these gifts forever, burned into your skin. You don’t want the memory; you want it all, everything, to touch when you want to. You’ll rip people open, digging through their insides to find the small piece of yourself you’ve been missing, and you’ll move on to someone else. You’ll consume everything and everyone beautiful until you think you’ll be able to put yourself back together.

Mood states never last. No matter how sharp the feeling, no matter how long you search for something tangible, this will always define you. “Chronic Emptiness” was the first thing you checked yes, and you know immediately what This was. You’re an abandoned house, and you’re not sure if anyone ever lived there.

The only time you can escape this is when you close your eyes every night, or more likely, very early morning. When you’re asleep, you can forget everything. 

Sometimes, though, traces of This linger in your dreams: you dream of the same kinds of houses. You get lost in rows of dilapidated, abandoned homes, and you’ve lost your way. They’re falling apart and you can smell the black mold. The soil outside burns if you touch it. All the pastel Victorians are now varying colors of rotting flesh, and the paint hangs from them in ribbons, the windows kicked out, the insides dark.

When you wake up, it won't seem as bad. Things never do, in the morning. There’s something cathartic about waking up from a long state of unconsciousness.

You feel that This will never go away, but at least now, you know what it is. You might still run through life trying not to feel a thing, speeding towards oblivion, trying to avoid the pain that you think will come to you through everyone else, but you don't want to be alone. You want to share this with someone, anyone, pulling this feeling from your veins, laying it flat, white hot metal, burning holes in the floor.

Someday, you will, and that someone won't hurt you for it. You'll understand that people aren't black and white, All Bad, or All Good, even when it seems like you've never known a shade of gray in your life. What you don't know about This is that you can fight it. It doesn't have to be the amorphous pain that keeps you from loving anything, anyone, even yourself. You'll do your best to remember your Good Self, when it feels like This is the only thing that defines you. You're reminded of the person you could be when you make someone smile, when you do something kind. When you find something to fix outside of yourself, you might begin to feel whole. If you learn its nature, maybe you can finally stitch the edges of the hole shut, and find your way to somewhere beautiful.