Thirty Three 03.17.10

You are like an algebra problem to me. Dressing yourself up in letters that change constantly so that I cannot find any resolution to this conundrum. You clothe yourself in riddle and keep my eyes from the truth of who you are. And I am left confused. Not because I don't know where to go from here, I know where I am going to go. But I don't know how to take the unfamiliar and attach it to something familiar in my world.

You are like a new person I have met, and without knowing your name I am speaking to you. I am introducing myself and still left wondering what to call you. What to speak when I call you by name. Before I learn your name, I have to call you by something to get to know you. At first you called yourself Sasha. Now I stare at the jagged X between us, the Y written out in curving lettering, the drooling lazy Z sliding off the page and out of view in watery transparent ink. I just want to know your name, what your value it bears so we can both be more specific. I just want to be able to call you by your real moniker and know that when I speak it, it's valid and true.

It is likewise for the letters I see in an algebra equation. I have never been upset by them, I see them as a challenge. Ever a clever detective I enjoy solving the riddle to discover the value of "X." When I view you now, I see you like that letter with numbers attached to your sides. I would like to multiply them, as I know I should, or perhaps divide them if that is what the equation dictates. But I can't even begin to clutter up my scratch paper with these calculations because I don't know what your X should stand for. Letters like these “Xs”, “Ys”, or "Zs", however you choose to represent yourself now are used to as a placeholder. They represent an unknown number, but a number none the less.

This newsprint of variables you have wrapped yourself in now, it still has a value. A lowest common denominator, and that unknown number is called a variable. If I read you as simply as "Your age in years y plus 5 is equal to eight times my age, minus 182." It would make about as much sense as a Lewis Carrol problem. The Y can be solved for, eventually it will be found out. But why, bear the y, instead of your true value. Why hide the value with a variable. Why not just reveal yourself. When have I ever been frightened away by anything you showed me?

Do you honestly believe that after all that has passed between us the simple value of a variable would make me divest myself of your presence? It is just as I said to you the other day. Why would I delude myself into believe that happiness and love between us means you have to lie to me and be dishonest? You think I would believe that staying with me if you didn't want to would be good for either of us? I want you to be happy, that is how I care about you. But I would rather know the real truth, than hide in an illusion. Now mystery is all you afford me. And I can't for the life of me understand WHY you might think it's better to omit and cover up your value with a placeholder that represents the unknown than to just reveal the hidden value and let us see each other as we really are.

Solving this problem, revealing the variables is the only thing that will allow us to ever mean anything to each other again. I am not speaking of love anymore. Not in the sense of the words Agape, or Eros, or Storge. I am not foolish enough to contend any longer that Agape or Eros flow between us now, no it is not that. I am speaking of Philia. The only thing that would bind us together now is the repose of a virtuous kind of love that bears the spirit of friendship. It carries with it a kind of loyalty and requires virtue, equality and familiarity. It is the spirit of love between friends, family and community. But if you cannot divulge the value to your variables, then we do not have honesty between us. And so we can never be anything more than a memory to each other. You will become one of those equations I practiced in elementary school or high school and never could solve.

You'll float around my mind when I am trying to get to sleep some nights in the future, your "Y" running through my head like a heartbeat. I will always wonder why one side consisted of a two numbers and a math operation, and the other side only consist of a number. But I'll know, when I do the math out, they mean the same. The equation will balance out. Even if we use variables like nicknames. I will know that the nickname still equals you. If I call you by that name or your real name you would answer just the same. To put it plainly, you might go by another name than I used to call you but this one truth will remain the same…different names same person.

Alas, I still have no idea how to find the value of "Y" in the above equation you have poured yourself into. But I know a bit about fact families. I know they can show the relationship between two families if I use addition and subtraction or multiplication and division. There are four facts included in each fact family. In this equation that stands between us now they are: Honesty, artifice, loyalty, and aversion. You may never afford me the value to the variable on your own. I may have to solve the equation by myself. But it will be a sad day when I do, because then I will know for some reason you left unsaid: you let the spirit of Philia between us atrophy and with it my hopes to continue to have you in my life ever, even as a friend.