Sliced Trees and Dead Words

41 - Soul mateship.

- DALEN -

It's never enjoyable fighting someone you love. Those particularly nasty experiences twist and morph into a disastrous mess that rips apart your soul, leaving you exposed to the elements and praying for death. Or maybe that's just me . . .

I've been told I'm a fighter; but honestly, I can't stand arguing with people, least of all Luna. Not only is she always right, but she's also scary when she knows you know she is. Like, the confidence she gains from backing you into a corner just fuels her tirade, and the high horse she sits on can march her away from any battle unscathed.

Luna and I have fought about so many things over the years. My drug use, my alcoholism, my mental health, my running away, my desire for death. Various other ill-advised choices I've made over the years.

It's weird, though. We've never fought about us, or our friendship. We both knew where we stood, and apart from one little sympathetic mishap, we've stuck to that and it hasn't caused any major dramas. It's taken me until now to realise what that means.

Luna and I were never compatible romantically, and my presence in her life was only ever meant to be one of friendship. Maybe my love for her, which I always assumed was a romantic love, wasn't actually that at all. Maybe it's just an intense friendly love; one on a slightly different level to your regular everyday friendship. A soul mateship of sorts.

Actually, that describes it perfectly. What Luna and I had was soul mateship. My soul befriended hers, embodying all those typified Aussie mateship qualities that are heralded as being some of the primary defining traits of our great nation. Loyalty and friendship. Having each other's backs through thick and thin, deep in the trenches of life. Always wanting the best for each other, and doing everything possible to help them get it.

Platonic soul mates.

Stronger than your average friendship, and definitely not involving mating of any kind.

I'd never be able to keep up with her if we were anything more than friends. She's hard enough to argue with as a mate. I can only imagine how much worse it would be if there was that kind of love involved on both sides, too.

I remember being around her once arguing with some loser she was dating (the mating kind of dating). She went that poor bloke hard, even though he totally deserved it. He tried to tell her she shouldn't be welcoming her homeless mates into her shop, that it wasn't right or proper to be encouraging them to 'abuse her generosity,' and that it reflected poorly on her business that she would welcome filthy junkies and lazy drunks into such a boutique place, or some such bullshit like that.

I was insulted for her, and would have had a crack at the loser myself if it wasn't for the fire it lit under Luna's ass that fuelled her to do it all on her own. Anyone who knows and loves Luna for who she is knows that her decisions will always be her own, and that doing the right and just thing by as many people as she can with the skills and agency she does indeed have is more important to her than public opinion. And those Sunday guys she's befriended mean the world to Luna, which this unworthy degenerate learned that day in spades. There's no winning against her when it comes to them. She'll go in to bat for them until her last breath fades to dust because it's the right thing to do.

And Luna will always do the right thing, even when she doesn't want to and when she hates herself for it afterwards. She lives by a fiercely moral code, one which just never made all that much sense to me. My morals change day to day depending on so many things, mostly how much energy I wake up with in the morning to wage war against my conscience.

But not Luna. She can want something more than everything else in the world, hold destiny and her own guaranteed eternal happiness in the palm of her hand, and she will still walk away from it if she thinks, even on the most minute scale, that something isn't right or fair.

But one day soon, Luney Tune, you'll learn there's a lot more to living your right and fair life simply for everyone else's sake. Sometimes you've gotta just do you, Luna. Sometimes that's actually more right and fair for everyone, especially those you think you're protecting by neglecting your own desires and wishes. Sometimes that's actually what's destined—entirely and exactly what you want.

So, what is it that you want, Luney Tune, and how are we going to help you accept that you're allowed to just want it? That you should simply throw caution to the ever-circling wind lapping about you every day, unclench those fearful eyes, look upon your every desire with clear and confident eyes, and just reach out and take it?

If the world hasn't ended yet, Luna, it's not going to. You don't need to keep fighting. Just listen to your heart and let it lead you where you need to be. I promise you don't need to be afraid.