It has struck me as odd how we say goodbye only when we feel we absolutely must. Loss is, above all else, a capricious pain. We do not know how much it hurts until the blade is in our heart. Why not try it on when we know it will come eventually? To realize what we are willing to pay before we are asked to pay it. As rebellion against an insane world, I will say goodbye before I must. I will plunge the blade into my heart.
I have known you in so many forms, even before I recognized your face. When I looked down at the dirt in wonderment of it all, you were smiling back at me. When I leap, type, and think, you hold my hand. I have made you part of me, accepted you into my very essence, and soul, and spent so many long hours staring into your eyes that I am forever partly you. My mind, my heart, my eyes, and all the rest. I dream of you, I marvel at you.
I am your lady-in-waiting and knight in shining armor. I sit, silently begging for you to come to me, and when I hear your name besmirched, I leap without thought to your defense, dispelling the lies and rumors spread by those jealous of you, who have not courted you. All have eyes for you, whether they know it or not, and I am so, so grateful that you have taken me into your heart.
I love you, I so, so love you, I love you so much that the thought of being without you makes the world seem so dull. And yet, I may soon say goodbye. One cannot worship without a temple, yes, but that is not the heart of this.
You are timeless and infinite, but I am not. You are forever and a blink of a blink of a blink of a hummingbird’s eye. This body will decay, and while you are a worthy pyre to burn upon, I wish to burn for others.
You do not pass judgement, but I do. You dance away from those who grasp at you, whispering more and more, yet never finishing the sentence. You smile silently. I spin and whirl, toss and turn, press myself against sharp edges known and unknown. I am an imbalanced force.
I am yours, now and forever, but you are not mine. How could you be mine? You have held the hands of millions, and you will hold the hands of a million more. You belong to me as much as you belong to the stars and the flowers and the lasers and the spacetime trajectories. I, too, belong to a grand chorus, but I am beholden to them, while they do not need me.
When I was adrift, you were perfect for me, but I wish to be adrift no longer. I realize now just how human I am, and all that means, and you are inhuman in all but the most important way. If I am inhuman, it is in the most important way only, and that will only matter rather far from here and now. For now, every moment is my first, last, and only moment.
I will try to do good. I will try to do you proud. I am forever marked by you, and I will forever be your ambassador and admirer. I will send letters, for it is impossible for goodbyes to be absolute, even if they can are permanent, in this age of letters.
I could write a thousand more letters. I could talk about the wonder I felt discovering each part of you, and the transcendent joy of realizing that they were all part of a single whole. I could talk about the frustration of learning your language, as you refused to learn mine. You are every little thing, even the heartbreak of this goodbye. But I am finite, even as my love for you is not.
You revealed me as you revealed yourself, and through understanding you I came to understand myself. I turned your patient smile inward. I generalized, extended, accepted complexity and higher dimensionality. I found the white hole by studying the black hole. Discovery became alchemy, and I became myself as I became yours. How could I not?
I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you. Please never forget that I love you, even though I know you never will. I still wait upon you, hand and foot, and belong to you. At the end of this little rebellious phase, I will return, as all things do, and you will smile silently, as you always do. I love you.
> "and you are inhuman in all but the most important way"
"in all but the most important way"? I want to know what that way is!
My first guess for it was "self-consistent" ...but upon reflection, that doesn't seem right! Second guess: Physics is human-like because it is worthy of love?