Reflection

Elinor Carucci: After Argument

There’s this wall between us. This wall that we can’t get past; the unknown reason why we no longer communicate. What happened to a good old-fashioned discussion? When we speak, we argue.
We fight about why we can’t talk to each other, why we don’t have as happy a relationship as our friends. As our parents. We fight about why we fight. You repel me; I do the same to you, to protect what’s left. You say that nothing has happened, yet you agree that something has changed.

Yes, this old line: I still love you. And I think you still love me. Yet we are so far apart. We’re no longer travelling that vast, open road of life with our hands entwined. We’re still on the same interminable road, I hope, but looking at different things on that journey. I think if I were to feel your hand entwined with mine anytime soon, I would cry. It would be too much tenderness against this backdrop of disputes. I am abased, a lost soul trying to save something that I’m not even sure I still have. And you, you’re just so unrelentingly stubborn.

I don’t want to reduce this to platitude by saying that I am sure things will get better. Or that I can change, or that you can change. Maybe things won’t change at all. Maybe we have to accept that this is it, this is the end. As Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz said “C'est à cause que tout doit finir que tout est si beau”. And for a while, it was very, very beautiful.

"Flâneuse"