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conflict between life’s possibilities and life’s expectations. It was when he was conflicted that my melancholy began to turn into something like alarm. It has always been hard for me to think of him without romanticizing him. In many ways, I loved him the most of all if not only him; and it is with him that I am most tempted to flatter. It was one of the reasons I loved him: for that flattering light in which he saw me, for the person I was when I was with him, for what it was he allowed me to be, what he allowed us to be. I loved him as he was perfect, if only for me.
He once confessed that sometimes when he wasn’t with me, he was thinking about what was to come, contemplating the future - his future, our future. Next week, next month, next year, and beyond. Where would we be? How would we do it? That thinking was difficult for him. His mind trying to figure it out. It would frustrate him. It was a tree where the fruit was out of his reach. It made him unhappy knowing that it was filled with constraints, admitting that he had little control over the reality of things. A near-perfect elixir for pessimism - - believing he had little influence over the social and religious norms he had to contend with. We were doing our best just to keep to ourselves, to keep what we had safe.
I wake up every day with nothing to look forward to but us, he confessed. I feel like staying in bed.
With me! I would say, trying to make light of his pessimism.
But his pessimism was worrying to me. It was not just his future that felt bleak to him, it was also our future that felt bleak to him. There seemed little either of us can do about the circumstances imposed upon us. He would darkly muse that he would likely never see the future that he wanted nor the future that was expected of him. He seemed stuck in a cycle of frustrating hopelessness. It was a twisted notion to think that his life may revolve around the expectations of others with him having little choice in the matter.
It was in July. The air was thick and hot with moisture. We should have been celebrating his twenty-second birthday. Several days went by and there was no Carol. Unusual it was that she would be missing from our social circle