4.4 KiB
IOAN BĂLAN INDIVIDUAL-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL
Ioan,
I'm breaking my communications embargo to message you directly. I don't know the details, but I'm pretty sure this will pass through Castor without pinging Codrin or my exes (or anyone, for that matter). The last thing I want is yet another tearful letter from any of them just because my name flashed across their feeds.
Well. I say 'yet another tearful letter', but there's only been three --- one for each of them --- so I'm hardly being bombarded, but I just...I can't, Ioan.
I need to talk to someone about this. I need to talk to someone who truly understands. I talk to Sarah quite a bit, of course, both in a therapeutic and a professional context, but there needs to be that sense of connection to the matter on a more personal level than just therapist to client. She's a delight to work with and an amazing teacher (as are Artante and Anin Li).
In our sessions, we came up with a very specific way to deal with this decision that I've made. In order to ensure that I can learn to cherish who I was and who was in my life, I need to reinforce the positive memories of what I had. I need to make sure that those are stronger than the negative ones. I don't want that final, terrible morning to weigh on me more strongly than all of the good times that we had together.
You know, it's weird, though. I say 'final, terrible morning', but at the time, I don't remember it being such. I remember being very tired. I remember waking up and slipping away from Dear and making coffee in a cone of silence. I remember walking out onto the prairie. I remember suddenly seeing Codrin beside me, walking, head down in thought, as I focused on becoming me as quickly as possible. I remember walking past that brand new failing in the land with Codrin and not even having the mental capacity to think about it. All I remember doing was forking with each step, becoming who I am by the second and trying to move as far away from the life I had without losing my sense of self.
It wasn't terrible. It was busy. It was purpose-driven. It was constructive. I walked from that cairn to the next with Codrin beside me and then we talked for, what, five minutes? Ten? And then I kissed em on the cheek, grabbed a stone from the cairn, and left.
It's not a terrible memory. The worst part was Codrin asking if I wanted to go back and say goodbye, but that was over in a flash as I made my decision not to.
The rest of the morning wasn't even that bad. I stepped to Convergence and waited for True Name to show up and then walked into Customs and then I was off to Artemis.
Codrin was the first to contact me, about a month after I left. Eir message was...well, I said tearful, and I'm struggling to put it any other way. It was just text on a page, but if it had been an actual letter, mailed across the millions of kilometers between Castor and Artemis, delivered to my stoop, surely the ink would have run from a tear drop or two. I could hear eir emotion through the page, and I could feel the very same tugging in my heart that I knew ey was feeling, for are we not alike?
Bu we aren't, Ioan. We rushed that differentiation, that individuation, didn't we? We pushed as hard as we could for me to be a different person from em, and all we had in common was a last name and a history.
I haven't heard since in the years since I arrived, but I worry that ey's still heartbroken. There must be some word for that little piece of yourself that lives on in your up-tree instances, even if it's only the memory that they were borne from you
(but they still have each other, so each of their letters kept dragging me back into it)
(reframing as exes)
(if I sound panicky, it's because I am; I'm forgetting)
(This letter in the strictest confidence, I will be in touch with more, less painfully immediate news)
I love you, Ioan. I love you in that weird, roundabout way that a distant up-tree fork does. I love you for your completeness. I love you for being me, and yet not. I love you for being Ioan and not Codrin. I love you for the solidity that I remember of you through Codrin's eyes. I love who you used to be. I love who you've become. I love who you will be.
I want nothing more than to say pass on my love, but please, Ioan, please don't.
I'll just say "all my love" and be done with it.
Sorina Bălan
13 er-ularaeäl, 4778 Artemis Reckoning
END IOAN BĂLAN INDIVIDUAL-EYES-ONLY MATERIAL