Sunday, January 29, 2017

"A fool": A Dialogue

"Maybe I'm a fool."

"For what?"

"For believing. For wishing. For hoping. For dreaming. For... being kind, to myself. For... letting my guard down. But just, for allowing myself... grace, I suppose. But that's what happens when you allow a hardened heart... to soften, I suppose."

"Do you think you shouldn't have, then?"

"What?"

"Soften. Your heart."

"I don't know. I really don't. I guess I'll never know."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to know. Because I don't know how much more of this I can take."

"Of what?"

"Of being let down. Of being...let go of."

"So holding on is the problem?"

"Not for them. For me."

"What makes you say that?"

"It's not something that...people can see on the surface. They don't realize... how... how fragile I am. Until perhaps, it's too late. Too late for me, that is."

"I guess that's true. I've never seen you as someone who'd... let things like this, affect you that much."

"Well, now you know. Now you know who, or rather what, I really am."

"And what would that be?"

"Well, what do you think?"

"Don't say that."

"Why not?"

"It's the chances we take. The mistakes we make. That's what counts."

"What does it matter, when you can give it, but you can't take it?"

"But they're two different things you're referring to now."

"And I've only ever been on one side of it. The losing side."

Tuesday, January 24, 2017

You weren't there

"I needed you, and you weren't there."

"Where were you, when I needed you?"

"I just want you to be happy."

"What about all those times you could've made me happy, and you didn't?"

"I trusted you, and you betrayed me."

"I meant everything I ever said to you."

"That's a lie."

Things we've all heard, or said, at various points in our lives before.

Moments of heightened awareness.

Of the fragility, the vulnerability, of the moment.

Of the precarious position you've placed yourself in.

You can feel it happening. The inevitability of it.

The heartsickness coming on, setting in. The numbness that follows.

The bubble of the moment bursts, and gives way to reality.

Whether right before you, or across the oceans and the stars, there's no way it doesn't touch you and leave you with a scar.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

Lawless, faithless

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you."
- Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Caught between two worlds of polar opposites.

One where you roam free, and follow your heart's desire at every whim, where you live in the moment and go with the flow and your instincts, with not a care in the world of the consequences that come after.

One where the line between independence, and recklessness and stupidity, becomes ever more blurred, more often than not melding into one and the same.

One where brute, affectionless force is used to make your way in a dog eat dog world, in both your public and private life.

Where the end result of the achievement of your goals justifies the means by which you pursued them.

And then, there's the Other.

Where you pause at every turn and corner, hesitate and think twice.

Where everything is a make-or-break decision from which there's no turning back; for once you gaze into the abyss, it gazes back into you.

It's anarchy, on an invisible plane, on an incomprehensible level.

You're caught between the rules of the two; you're lawless.

You're caught between the beliefs of the two; you're faithless.

And you can't reconcile them, no matter how hard you try.

One wrong, foolish, impulsive move, and you become the very thing that you fight.

Down the road to perdition. The path of no return.

Where you lose yourself, and you can't find your way back.