(N)ever

It was going badly. So it was only a matter of degree. Not only, as if only a difference of mere unhappiness or agony; only a difference of discomfort and misery. How badly it would have gone I could only guess. “If only” never matters. It was.

Still, I imagine the day before and the day after. Always, this old movie in my head, filled in with memories of memories. Always sad, the pain always stronger, more poignant than what happiness I’m sure there was, what must have been a milquetoast happiness, mild and unremarkable. And I try to trace a trajectory of where I would have gone. It could well have been worse. I never considered that before. But I remember vague plans I had to escape my unhappy circumstances that might possibly have been realized had I not been shocked into a two year long catatonic state. Probably not worse than what happened, but one never knows.

He could have done worse to me had he lived. The things he did do, the ones I shrugged off as inconsequential, though they weren’t, had he stayed, he could have improved upon. Any number of things, from actively damaging me further, to abandoning me, even though alive. Mon Frere.

There was a sister, a mother, a father, who ranged from useless to destructive.

Now, how can I, with all of this, imagine you? How could you, no matter how well I tell my tale, imagine me? How are we to weigh each other?