When I Remember...

When I remember back on life the way it was, perhaps the way it is.  I remember pain, and driving home late nights in tears, the agonizing stone in my chest and the overbearing emptiness plaguing my mind.  I remember the stupid arguments, the angry glares, and the regretful words.  I remember the fear and the disillusionment.  But I also remember the passion and the beauty.  I remember the love and the openness.  I remember the periods of distrust and the lies, but I also remember the trust and the honesty.  The helpful hand and the empathetic ear and the purgation of carnality, the romanticism of struggling against the world, forging new bonds of attachment and living life on our terms by our rules.  Riding dangerously close to edge but gripping each other just in time before the other slipped and fell.  I remember scraped knees and shattered egos and moments powerful enough to stop time itself.  I remember the erosion of boundaries between two bodies, two identities, and two souls.  There were times of betrayal and times of loyalty.  Times of disappointment and times of encouragement, but there was life in every single breath we shared.  There was struggle in every single step we took.  Our lives transcended friendship, transcended enemies, transcended relationship.  Every horrifying word we threw, we threw against ourselves.  Every mistake and every victory were merely induced upon ourselves.  Like lunatics we argued against mirrors, madmen fighting against themselves trying to find a flaw in each other when we could only find a flaw in ourselves.  Nothing we lived was a lie and every moment we experienced held meaning.  We put ourselves on trial and found each other guilty of nothing except trying to explore what we could not understand in ourselves.  We learn through contrasts and contrasts are found through pain.  In trying to discover myself, I discovered you, and in so doing I have made you a part of me that I can never forget and will always be.