“When you must beg someone to stay, you will find that you have fallen far beneath the line.”

Those were the final words he ever said to me. 

That was the last time I ever saw him again.  

I still struggle today, struggle now, to get past the disgust wrought in his voice. 

The vagueness in his words, that had cut ever so clearly through my mind. 

Warping the fabrics of my reality as I rush to comprehend the meaning behind his curse-like statement. 

What was this “line” he spoke of? 

In asking myself this, parts of me believe he referenced “respect”. 

In the self. 

In the individual. 

In the “me” that exists only, for me. 

Other parts of me argue that they reference “pride”. 

An independence that spites the idea of depending on another for joy. 

An ever-shifting desire to push others far beyond the borders of one’s world. 

An ignorant need to prove that one can exist without the presence of others. 

That one can know satisfaction, without ever once needing to search for it in another’s eyes. 

The rest of me argues that they reference “the bottom”. 

The pit of the pit. 

The hole beneath the hole. 

As far from the light as one could ever hope to be. 

In which freedom is but a speck of white, barely visible above this ocean of misery. 

Regardless of what we all believe collectively. 

We know that he was right. 

We know that the words he spoke, whilst cold and laced with steel, were the ones we must still consume. 

The ones we have little choice but to swallow. 

Because he was me. 

Because he is me. 

From a time far beyond my own. 

From a land far beyond the one I stand. 

I just couldn’t tell whether he came from the beginning. 

Or the end.