Dorian | Harry
I don't know. I want a lot of things that don't make sense together.
I want to get better. I want to be not-sick. That's easy. So far so good.
I want to tell Peter, because it's hard not to. And I sort of -- there are things I like about the idea of telling him, because -- you know, if he's sad, I'll know that he cares about me, and I'm pretty sure he'd be sad. I'd want him to be sad. But I also-- don't like it when he's sad, and don't want him to be sad, so there's that. I don't know. I'd like the experience of telling him and then I'd like for him to go on not knowing. Because I don't want him to feel sorry for me.
And I want to-- on some level, you know, I still have feelings for him, and still want to be with him. And to that end, I want him to want to be with me. But I don't want it to be because I'm sick, and he feels guilty, or he feels sorry for me. Except that sometimes I kind of do, because maybe that's good enough, you know? And sometimes it seems like he does want what I want, but he just... isn't there yet, or he needs a push in the right direction, and maybe if I tell him we don't have a lot of time... but then that might fail, and just make it harder for him to sort out what he wanted. And I'd never know if he was with me because he wanted to be, or because he felt like he had to be, which would really fuck things up long term. But I have no way of knowing if there's going to be a long term. And if I'm going to die anyway, maybe I should take what I can get. But that's-- all of that seems transparently manipulative, which isn't something I want to be. And it wouldn't be good for him, which I do care about.
I don't want him to feel responsible if there's nothing he can do. And I don't want him to treat me differently and act awkward around me because he knows. And I don't want this to color our entire relationship. And I love him, and care about him, and want him to be happy. And I don't know how this fits into any of that.
I guess ideally, what I'd want is to not be a person who contemplated the possibility of leveraging a terminal illness into a relationship. But that ship has sailed. Now i'm going to feel like anything I actually do decide to do is sort of... tinged by the fact that I considered which scenarios would produce desired responses.