I’m talking into the void. Nothing is there now.
But I remember someone else speaking just a while ago. They spoke very clearly about friendship and how important it is… how it’s the most important thing. They even shed tears for that most important of things.
But now there is nothing. I’m listening to the void.
“What happened,” I ask, knowing what happened. Truth would have been the wrong tool for this job; it’s blunt and not very functional. A lie is multi-faceted and endlessly useful – ideal for misleading both the deceived and the deceiver.
But this crime is not without a victim. I claim that pyrrhic prize - that lonely plot of ground - for myself and only myself. I will childishly defend it and use it as a vantage point from which to throw blame. It’s all I have left.
I was clinging to friendship, but nothing is there now.
There is only tension – and the pain that accompanies it. It’s the tension between dearly missing a friend and hoping I never see them again. If we did meet, I know I would still be speaking into the void, and that pain would be unbearable.
Now the only thing between us is the void.
The stage in this tacky melodrama was managed even worse than the deplorable circumstances demanded. The dialogue was filled not only with lies but trite platitudes, vacuous self-help and other pedantic nonsense. In any other case, I would have fallen asleep by act one, scene two. Unfortunately, though, I found myself to be one of the main players.
But my lines merely fall into the void. This show has become a one-man play. A dialogue has become a monologue. It’s spoken to an indifferent audience. It will go on long after the seats are vacant, the doors are locked and the lime lights quietly snuffed.
It will get terrible reviews.
