IT WAS NAIVE of me to think that I could have ever replaced you. I tried so hard, for years, and failed spectacularly. I don’t even know why I started trying, or how many astrologers, witches, healers, tarot card readers, and other masters of the black arts I consulted, only to be led deeper into my own delusions. I did it for you, to free you of me, and to free myself of you. I saw it as a mutual liberation. That’s what you asked of me. In retrospect, it was wrong of me to wish for anything, one way or the other, and especially wrong to try to course correct and to play god. I had to learn the unfortunate lessons that all people must learn, that the more you tinker, the more you pry, the more you struggle against the web of time, the harder things become, the less natural they are, the worse off everyone in the end is. The only right path forward is the raw and honest one, I think. There isn’t any other legitimate way. I could find 15,000 substitutes, and they would all crumple in the end. I didn’t make it so. That’s how it is.
north! 