Please Do Not Switch Off The Console

Real life, you say to me with a smirk on your face, should be more like video games.

The goals should be clearer, the tutorial shouldn't last so long, and character interactions should be more clear. Most of all though, you should be able to save and reload a checkpoint.

You laugh, equally at your own cleverness and at how you think you could organize life much more neatly. You get up and leave, but I stay and think.

Would it be three save slots? If it was, how would you choose what to save? Would you choose that one perfect day, where everything seemed to go right and you wished it would last forever? Would you save that day and make that wish a reality?

Or would you simply save your youth, far away from the aches and pains both physical and otherwise?

Or perhaps you'd save that moment before the final argument that tore her away from you, right before you uttered those words that seem foolish and immature in retrospect.

When I ask you later, you seem confused that I haven't moved on from your simple joke. Don't be foolish, you tell me, we've way past having limited saves. You can save whatever and whenever you want, you say, and focus back on your meal. But I continue to think.

If you can save whenever you want, where do you draw the line? Do you save right before every hug, never sure if you'll look back one day and realize it was the last she ever gave you? Do you save as soon as the fractures appear, foretelling an end that you never suspected or believed would arrive? Do you save at the first kiss, back when the possibilities seemed as endless as your joy? Or do you save at the very beginning: right back at the first clumsy, confusing relationship that set the tone for all to follow? Do you use that to save yourself from all the mistakes and bad habits you would later pick up?

Do you reload endlessly? Do you search for the perfect words, the one gesture, the glowing chance that perhaps could reverse her decision? Do you keep trying, over and over, as each attempt proves as futile as the last? And when you finally abandon hope of that moment, do you go back five minutes? 5 days? 5 months? Where do you stop?

You thought that nothing could compare to the heartache that would follow you, polite guests in the corner of your awareness who nonetheless refused to ever truly depart. But perhaps you never considered the pain and suffering that awareness of true futility could bring about, the biting truth that there was truly nothing to be done, a truth that burns right to your core, eating away all the self-deception and what-ifs. Perhaps there was some comfort in uncertainty, the belief that maybe next time you'll get it right. You wouldn't want to face the alternative.

I try to bring this up with you later, only to face your annoyance that I haven't let this topic drop. Leave it alone, you say. It was just a joke. It wasn't anything serious. I wish I could reload and never have said it, ha ha. You give me a look.

But I can't move on from the thought, and suspect it's a deeper question than you're willing to admit: you don't believe your own lie.

What would you save?

(-HTMC)
[first draft]