the idiom

There are two outcomes when someone like me asks for a hand up. Either you pull me up, or I pull you down. 

-

There is a graveyard for everyone I have ever loved deep in my subconscious. All those that have tried in a meaningful way to grab my hand, light my path, and push me, they are here.

I remember the confusion on each face as they collapsed, buckling under my weight, joining me down here. There is nobody I have ever loved that I don’t still love. And that is the worst part of it all - I gave most of me away. It is unlikely that each piece exists as something I would recognize now, though I feel their absence at all times. That said, I gave pieces of myself away freely. What right do I to them now? I have my own graveyard to tend, after all. 

And therein lies the rub - the pieces of me I gave away were each a trade. All of those pieces were bartered, and each permanent. Each collapse fell both ways, and to assume that I alone created the implosion, and thus hold the remnants of both, strikes me as narcissistic. Selfish, even. It misses the forest through the trees. 

The sublime lives in the breaking of this most human social contract and we all carry pieces of each other everywhere, at all times.