Much has been made of my passion my emotional strength and ability but in the end I think it’s really nothing more than a load of bullshit that I told myself and allowed so many others to rattle off because it stroked my ego. Pride is my sin of choice, and while overt praise might be something that makes me uncomfortable, I have no issue or apprehension when it comes to recognizing or acknowledging other attributes. So it with that said that I find myself in a familiar but all but forgotten spot.
I’ve been here before, I walked these halls, I’ve trekked these roads and gone this route and I’d all but forgotten it. It seems that much like the lyrics, “I’ve come round, full circle”. She pulled me from the precipice once upon a time, or perhaps I just pulled myself from the brink of descent in order to indulge in what I thought would be little more than a brief jaunt of carnal satisfaction, but somewhere in the deeper recesses I knew it couldn’t work. I smothered myself in her, tried to ignore and run from the chasm of emptiness. I wanted to be gone from it, but I didn’t want it for me, I wanted it for her. In her I saw an opportunity to be happy, but I really just diluted myself into believing that’s what it was.
Now I’m back, staring into the endlessly dark abyss and watching as my toes creep over the edge, waiting for that subtle wind, the soft flap of a butterfly’s wing, or just the right words, before I jump over the edge and spiral headlong into that gap, no longer diluting myself with ideas of higher grandeur or the illusion that I can attain something more. I am alone, set adrift in a society that I never fit into. My best friend has turned his back on me to pursue his own romantic pursuits and being too tired of listening to me lament the loss I suffered, opting to decry, insult, impugn, belittle, and offer one derogatory comment after another as to how I let her victimize me, how I allowed myself to be emotionally raped time and again, how I have no right to call myself a man, how I need to move on and forget the “stupid hooker”. I need no reminder or assistance in feeling self-loathing or anger. I’ve got those emotions in spades.
But I am alone. I have no one close to talk to, no soul to share with, no sympathetic essence to whisper to. My best friend has left me, the love of my life has gone away, the once hallowed voices within this last bastion of sanity have long since gone quiet and departed. I gave up so much for her, and it seems now I’m left with nothing. I’d say it’s ironic but it was bound to happen. So once again, I’m on the edge, the dirt squishing between my toes, the sand rough against the soles of my feet, the soft breeze carrying a million sordid and painful memories that never seem to cease their assault on my threadbare psyche, the violent sun beating down relentlessly on my burnt and bruised skin, my eyes hollow and broken a fitting metaphor for the once vibrant organ that beat within my now cavernous chest, and despite it all, a knowing smile graces my lips. A knowing smile that I choose this, I choose to be here. I choose to dwell in this place because it’s better than the alternative, it’s a more fitting and quietly beautiful place than the horrors that wait me in the other place, in the land where I can still smell her in the air, I can taste her on my lips, I can still feel her in my arms, under my fingertips. The place where I have the highest peaks of happiness and fulfillment, beyond anything I ever dared dream. She swore, time again, there was another out there, someone more deserving, someone more worthy. I didn’t believe it then, I don’t believe it now.
This world is full of ugly people, and I can’t stand it anymore. I’m immersed in a society of broken people miring in their own misery instead of trying to mend their damage or better their station, a world where being decent and offering kindness is seen to be something extraordinary and noteworthy instead of common and unremarkable because of the prevalence of it, an existence where even the most pure and unconditional love offered to someone else is spit back time and again with little more than a token show of emotion and gratitude and the platitude that someone else will be more deserving and able to return it in kind instead of just accepting it for what it is. This world is sick, and it’s trying to infect me, to break me, to ruin me. I devoted all of myself to an ideal, to a belief, to a person…and in return I was told I wasn’t good enough, that my compassion for my parents was a weakness, that my kindness or my ability to handle the chaos of the world was a detriment, that my eyes being open was some kind of flaw…that my love was wrong.
I dealt with it as a consequence of the dynamic I put myself in. I suffered through it because faith and hope allowed me to hold out for more, and in the end I had nothing but four wasted years of heartache and disappointment and a “girlfriend” that would rather spend hours of time beating herself up instead of making the hard choices and doing what her heart had been screaming at her to do weeks before she stood at the alter and made her life a lie. But such is the past and I am powerless to influence the will of others or to alter what has already happened. I am, however, in complete control of the choice I now face, the chasm I’m teetering on, the abyss I’m looking so very deeply and intently into. If I have learned anything it is that this world is full of ugly, selfish, ignoble people, more consumed with furthering their own designs, with satisfying their own misguided agendas, than they are with adhering to any sense of decency, kindness, compassion or measure of appreciation for the acceptance and understanding they’re shown. This world, this place, is unworthy of me, undeserving of having what I offer, it is too selfish, too uncaring, too wretched to ever earn what I have to give.
And so, once again I’m on the jagged edge, looking over and past my toes into that dark black hole, the emptiness, baiting me, calling me, coaxing me with outstretched arms to enter the embrace of being numb, of being beyond the ugliness, of simply existing without reaction, of being freed from my passion, and I am wont to enter, to take a single step over the edge and shut it all down, to break the bonds of my own self servitude and find freedom. These shackles I wear do nothing to enlighten me, they keep me bound like a dog, waiting to be fed, to be acknowledged or noticed, to be loved. I was at this four years ago, spying that waiting hole and approaching with caution and trepidation but I walked the other way because I believed it led to something better…it didn’t.
Now I’m back and I’ve made my decision, no more passion, no more writing, no more caring, no more venting, no more caring…just the cold silent embrace of emptiness. I am alone. I gave all I had and so many took without giving back. So now I am taking for me. I will be above it all, beyond it all, unable to care or get involved, no longer moved by tears or entreaties, just cold and calculating, like many others. Down this road untold success awaits, unfathomable riches, immense wealth and advancement, all by playing the game that everyone else has been. I’ve reached the end of the board and I am no longer a pawn. I will seize my destiny and assert my will. I will make the descent and plunge into that gaping maw leaving behind pain and anger, impotence and rage, fear and doubt, loss and longing, and love. I will be free and untainted, no longer a slave to my desires. No systematic detachment or pithy rhetoric, just ceasing to care. No one else ever has, no reason I should either.
