Nic Narrates

I’ve been thinking a lot about imprints. If it is to be believed (and it is by this blogger) that we are products of our environment, then the growing process is an illusory horizon indeed. The pursuit of that pivotal moment of realization, that sense of finish, thusly remains outside our reach.

Something about this notion is disquieting to me. My adventurous side is relieved.

The people who come in and out of our lives leave indelible marks upon us, and sometimes, we upon them. It is not always so. But whether they are thrust upon us by our simply having been born into this world or by fate alone, there is ever the opportunity to be molded by time spent in their company. We are left with a love of Blues, an avoidance of stinky cheese, even a favorite vacation locale. From those hours and weeks, from those happy, hurting, angry, imaginative people; we emerge ever changed, not merely for the better.

I only now am realizing that, for me, it is instead the lifetime absence of one person in particular that continues to shape me.

Our relationship is tenuous at best. It was our similarities, I’m told, that drove him away in fear. But oh the longing! The longing to feel loved by the man who was first supposed to love me. It is an empty pit into which no amount of words can be flung for the filling. And though he was there every day, I could see him, talk to him, be scolded and ignored by him; the affection, I am also told, is there, but it remains unspoken, unseen, unrealized. And I ache for it. Desperately.

His mark is a thumbprint left upon me, an unfair legacy to the man who wants to love and be loved by me. It is the plight of the man who hopes to wash the thumbprint away, to cover over this pit of longing with his own brand of love.

But fingerprints upon fingerprints only smear the surface, confusing each man’s mark.

Filed under: childhood, people should be nicer to each other, the sex, work in progress by Nic