Valentine's Day 14 February 2002

Pic of the day: Valentine heart.

Wish you knew me

Dearest friend, I think you know already that I love you. Perhaps not in a Valentine way ... or perhaps exactly in that same way as the school kids who make clumsy hearts and don't really think about sex for a few years yet. They just really like someone and think it is love. And you know, I think it is. Non-Darwinian love.

And I sit here pondering the irony that you, my best friend, will never read this. All manner of strangers come and go here. Some have become my friends, and I am glad for that. I like friends. But you, the one I wish knew me inside and out, will not come. I accept it. It hurts only a little bit, that you don't want to learn to know me better. I suspect it's because you can't stand to see me humiliate myself the way I do. Oh, I wish you knew me. Then you would see how far I have yet to go in humility.

You've told me that I'm rather transparent. Perhaps so. I hope so. But I don't really think so.

***

In "primitive" societies, it was common for people to have at least two names: One official, that everyone knew. And one secret, that only those knew who they trusted. To know a person's secret name was to have power over them; for the secret name told who they really were.

After more than three years of writing here, I don't think these people yet know my secret name. I have bared more on the Net than many people will tell their own parents or children or brothers or perhaps even spouse. Yet there is much more to know, and I wish you knew it. I wish you knew the name of my heart.

But you don't, and you never will. Fate is slowly, glacially slowly, tearing us apart. Years of saying hello so rarely and saying goodbye so often. I can still see vaguely in the distance the blazing light that I saw in your heart when you were still too young to conceal it. But I fear that when we have said our last goodbye, none of us will know it. I wish we knew.