You and I made promises, I suppose - though that was long ago. Long before.

Before we really recognized our place in the chronology. That the settlements in Israel are simply more, of the same settlement process Europe has always practiced. That the 2009 Ukraine skirmishes had been a rehearsal, that the manicured lessons in policing we'd learned before, no more than a soaped-up opera.

Before we realized that genocide recurs, generationally, and the pace is only increasing. That weapons really are more serious than they used to be, and that Checkov really dialed in on our human condition; the gun exercises an appeal upon the burdened mind, and there are no end to the burdens on our many minds.

That the burdens of age could apply to us someday? Fanciful; nothing had broken us so far. The scrapes only edged us on, for the exhiliration recalled in their memories. How odd that someday I'd see the scar on my hand, and feel no need to hide, no need to brush aside the scar's warnings any more, since the memory's emotional significance has been hollowed.

---

I am in a limbo, one I recall from earlier rehab programs. This round, I can choose my departure, and so I cling more desperately, scared of actions that I could choose, that could break the motionless calm of this space, the daily cycle that reassures, although I hardly engage.

This does help, because I can see people, or choose to pass on them. I'm used to passing on people, or to seeing them in passing, or to hardly seeing any of them, as I press my gaze upon the ground.

I am recognizing now, the clear signs and signifiers of the emotions of today, an odd sensation to realize in an emotional moment, that I can choose my response. That emotions can occur at a pace wherein I can experience, decide, and respond, perhaps including chances to consider.

The panic that has had me fleeing responsibilities or rushing to neglect necessary connections has nearly gone. Had all of this been caused by homelessness? No, the abuses I'd had were too numerous, although each of them sadly too commonplace.

Do those abuses of my early years earn a place here, in my essays? Odd to hold them up as so significant, to place them alongside the code I produce as something that peers could peruse for lessons. Of course, my problem has been how I make such a decisions. I err to formalism, posing this problem in the rough shape, and as I dig in and inquire more, using my prose as a reference as I read again, the phrase "peers could peruse for lessons" reminds me of who these peers are.

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My peers seem to be an incessantly odd cacophony of groups, whom I bounce into and among in an odd cadence, an odd arrhythmia. Coders, bodybuilders, gamers, singers, policymakers and media producers. People engaged in modern business. My failure to focus has been clear to see, clarified and displayed by my abundance of unfulfilled promise.

The peers now, I suppose, would be people I can once again call friends, although I abandoned the label for years, calling people a colleague or pal, so as to measure some degree of proximal connection or another.

These days, I seem to bond quickly to people any place I go, a skill that seems to belong to someone else.

The bonds form, perhaps because I can finally embrace my uniqueness. Before, I'd been an ungainly mess of poor decisions, my self-perception missing the forest of me-as-social-animal, for the gnarled stumbling trees of each sharp-edged psychosis. Had my self-perception or perhaps self-respect come earlier, I'd see that each day I came so close to being someone coherent. I'd been so close to finding the explanations that could render me suddenly approachable, through body language or humor or song or bird-call. These days I recognize that those moments are easy to reach, if I can bring myself to engage in the practice.

---

You and I had a connection, perhaps, for a moment. Enough to begin promising one another, though the promises had no real shape, had been made of dreams, had hardly a seal to symbolize their passage, no more than a dinner and alcohol, a dance and turntable, a plant and candle on a bedside table, or books on a shelf shyly rearranged.

When we realized there had been no basis for a promise, no common ground to dance on, the panic happened in both of us - so I assume. You usually seem to carry the clear head, and the panic normally clouds my social readings, so to be precise and honorable all I can simply say is how deeply shaken I'd been.

How close I came to the horror of losing my mind, daily, for years, and then falling back to place my blame, on all I had remaining - the failed desperation to see a promise realized, one that I placed all my faith into, and the broken memories of your calm assurance, though I could feel the ripples of anger under your tongue, as you declared me simply insane for displaying any faith at all.